Tomato season is coming!

Tomatoes are everywhere. All my plants have lots and lots of tomatoes on them.

This one is the first Mortgage Lifter.

These are Opalkas, a paste tomato.

It won't be long before the dreaded hornworm comes around. I generally inspect the plants each morning and again in the evening, looking for the telltale skeletal leaves. Being colorblind, I find it very difficult to spot the catapillars, but their damage to the leaves gives them away.

A case of squash vine borers.

I had my first dealings with squash vine borer this year. Some got into the first of the pumpkins I planted. I noticed some of the leaves starting to turn yellow (with green veins)  but only on half or less of the plant.

So I started doing some investigating and found this in the stems. 

As you can see, this section of the stem, near the roots, is starting to split which is a sure indication of a squash vine borer. 

 I cut this section of the vine out and put the small section with the borer in the trash and the rest in the compost pile.  I am growing several pumpkin plants this year (Connecticut field pumpkins) so the loss of half a plant is no great setback.