We have already had our first tomato crisis of the year. A few days after planting our high tunnel tomatoes, nearly two-thirds of them were dead. I came to discover that roly poly’s … that’s right, those cute little bugs your kids love to play with … were to blame.
With nothing else around the to eat, they were chewing through the stems of every tomato plant they could find. And we had HUNDREDS of roly polys.
Not good.
We replaced the dead plants and when planting our new ones, we put cans or buckets around them to hopefully make a barrier and keep the little suckers out. I think I’ve heard of other people doing this. Hope it works.
Oh, and we are heavily using diatomaceous earth around the plants , which roly polys hate. That seems to be working so far.
Last weekend we discovered that even the plants that lived had been damaged. We are trying to save them by adding cuffs around those plants and building up the soil inside.
First tomato crisis of the season. Probably won’t be the last.
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