Basic gardening tips - Worms in your tomatoes

Do you have tomatoes with holes in them, that develop into unsightly black spots and eventually ruin the tomatoes.  If you do, then you have worms.  They develop when either wasps, beetles, moths or flies lay their eggs on the tomato bush and as they hatch the worms bore into the flesh and feed until they mature and leave, starting the cycle all over again.  Unfortunately you are left with ruined fruit.

We recently found these little pests on my step daughter's tomatoes, the picture shows a relatively healthy bush, but when you look right into it there was a different picture, as seen above.

So what to do!  Prevention is better than cure, so inspect your tomato bushes regularly for eggs or small worms/caterpillars and  remove, always put in the bin to get rid of them.  There are plenty of insecticides available for the problem but once the worm is in the fruit they won't be effected by them, so you need to get them early.  I prefer to use a tomato dust to control insects on my tomatoes because it is so easy to use, but always read the instructions.  Remember it will also kill the good bugs so only use as required.


Be vigilant and you will have plenty of healthy fruit.







Happy gardening



Bronwyn