What's eating your tomatoes, and why you should carefully examine your sun hat!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Good morning, everybody. Welcome.I'm Ron Wilson, and you are in
the garden here on news radio six' ten WTVN, A two to one.
WTVN is our number. Jump onboard, talking about yard ning last
Saturday in July. Can you believethis? Last Saturday in July? Jump
into August next week. We aretalking just a few weeks away from Buckeye
football. High school football kids areback in the school. Cannot believe it.

(00:23):
This summer is flying by in aflash. I don't know when I
think back so far this summer,it's hot, been hot. We've had
some hot days, no doubt,and scattered rainfall big time. And we'll
talk more about that rainfall and properwatering as we do every week after we
talk with Buggy Joe Boggs. Thatwould be Joe Boggs, Assistant Professor,

(00:45):
Ohio State University Extension, Hamilton CountyAssociated Faculty OSHU, Department of Entomology,
co leader of the b E HT Team. Their website of course,
Beagle dot OSU dot du. Ladiesand gentlemen, mister Buggy Joe Boggs,
Good morning, sir, Good morning, what a day, What a great
day to get started. We coulduse rain though, couldn't we We can

(01:06):
always use a little bit more rain. I always use a little more rain.
We're not exactly you know, swimmingin deep water. It's it's I
love the way you said hit ormiss. I mean, are some locations
that that are doing quite well.I mean didn't even really get hit hard
with the June mini draft or I'mnot too sure what we're gonna call it,

(01:29):
but but you know, this rollercoaster ride with rainfall. It's not
responsible for some of the honey locuststo appear kind of burnt orange in parts
of Columbus. It's not like thatlike that. By the way, I
forgot to ask you, are youmissing a lizard? What? No,

(01:53):
it's not that I'm aware of.Okay, you found a lizard in somebody's
backyard. I guess it's a oneof the monitors that gets five feet long,
and I'm just curious if you aremissing one. By chance had and
looked in some of all your cages. Well, I thought maybe you were
talking about the Lazarus, the youknow, the noted Lazarus blizzards, the
wall lizards. Yeah, no,I guess it's pretty good size so oh

(02:16):
no, that's now that's interesting.Yeah, that would be boy, that
would you wouldn't need coffee in themorning if you woke up to that.
Would you saw that out in yourbackyard? No, that would be well,
of course if you go down tothe everglade, you could, right,
yes, you could. As amatter of fact, As a matter
of fact, they were talking aboutn that is one that I guess it

(02:38):
has been causing other problems elsewhere.So anyway, so those these locusts with
these orange burnt look in type leaves. Well, and I'd love to segue
you bounce back to me because earlierthis year, you know, we were
getting some questions about, you know, what is wrong with my locusts?

(02:59):
And it was and of course,you know, Ron, we have no
doubt if somebody says, hey,what's going on with the buck eyes,
we know what they're talking about,right, I mean, they're not ever
talking about a tree. That's notthat important. It's the team, right.
But but you know, earlier thisyear for reason yeah, well yeah,
I mean, you know, ahorse chestnut buck eyes. I mean,

(03:21):
you know that's another story. Butbut I you know, we were
asked I would get email what isgoing, you know, what's wrong with
my locusts? And of course tome, you know that that typically that
used to mean black locust to mebecause I was, you know, more
involved in the forestry side of things, and but of course you know,
over the years being more involved withlandscape sides of trees, you know,

(03:46):
I tend to think honey locus.Of course, we also have to consider,
well, maybe they're talking about grasshoppersright, the swarming grass or maybe
they're just confusing the cicadas with locusts. So when someone says what's wrong with
my locusts, well, earlier thisyear there seemed to be we do have

(04:08):
a borer. It's called the locustbore, and it only affects black locusts
and that can cause you can seeholes in trees. And of course black
locusts wood is very strong. That'swhy we make fence posts out of them
and used to make coal you know, posts out of them and coal mines.

(04:29):
But the point being is is thatyou know, when you start getting
these holes and it's tunneling, itcan cause the locust black locusts to break
over. But now we're getting questionsabout honey locusts. And black locusts.
Well, if it was, ifit was a break, we had stopped
right there, because it's so thething with black locusts, just for a

(04:56):
little bit longer, you know,we tend to not. I mean,
there are some really nice black locustsselections that are using landscaping. They are
some of my favorite trees actually,you know, that's just beautiful. They
don't get big and I'm trying tothink of help me out with us.
I'm trying to think of the mostpopular cultiv art. It has kind of
purple leaf, purple robe. Ireally like that tree. It's a it's

(05:23):
a it doesn't get to be huge, at least I've been watching one in
my neighborhood for years and nice roundedcrown doesn't get to be it's not getting
huge and seems to be a prettysolid tree. However, we do have
a native leaf miner and it's it'ssimply called the locust leaf miner, which

(05:44):
once again, you know, that'swhere we get into these common names that
can confuse us a bit. Andlocus leaf miner is the adults feed kind
of like Japanese beetles. They dokind of a skeletonizing of the leaflets,
And of course it's a leaf miner, so the larvae feed between the upper
and lower leaf surface, delaminating theleaves leafless and causing the leaflets to turn

(06:10):
brown. Actually they turn very brown. The trees can become, you know,
look like they're flaming. But you'llsee that along interstates mostly or sometimes
in your course, obviously in woodedareas. I've actually never seen it on
Purple Road, but I'm certain thatit might be able to make a living
on that tree. You can drivearound parts of Ohio right now and see

(06:32):
a bit of the flaming starting tooccur on black locusts. Now, locust
leaf miner does not get on honeylocus. Even though the trees are, you
know, in the same family,they're far enough apart that they don't share
they don't share common tests. Solocus leaf miner not a problem on honey

(06:57):
locusts. But the thing that ishoneylocus right now and the bug. Doc
Dave Shatler reported this past Tuesday thatthere are different parts of Greater Columbus where
you might see honey locusts that arestarting to become a bit burnt orange looking.
How do you like that flaming blacklocusts, burnt orange honeylocus. Yeah,

(07:19):
so what's happening. There is anentirely different insect that has a name
that's gonna it's going to confuse people, and it's not native, and it's
called the mimosa webworm. Now theydo a similar thing to fall webworm,
and that is the caterpillars. Itis a moth. The caterpillars will it

(07:42):
will enclose foliage in webbing, butit's much much tighter. So what they
do is they pull together the entireleaves with the leaflets into very tight nests
and then they feed as skeletonizers insidethe nests. And that's just happening.
That's that's really starting to uppear,like I said, in certain parts of

(08:05):
Columbus and in certain landscaping, andthey can be quite an issue. I
mean, we've had outbreaks in GreaterCincinnatian past years. I almost said,
unfortunately we don't see them this year, but I have to be Unfortunately we

(08:26):
don't have some buddy Joe Bog's sideof the story. Unfortunately we don't see
any. Yeah, unfortunately there's notree disasters to talk about. But uh,
but the populations do tend to riseand fall very dramatically from year to
year, even though these are nonnative insect And I do see. I'm

(08:46):
looking at my watch and next bookagain. Yeah, that's right, and
rise again. Yes, my mickeymouse hands are coming around. I think
we're about it at a break.Yes, we will take a break on

(09:07):
that one and come back with moreof Buggy. Joe Boggs here on news
radio six to ten WTVN. Hey, you know I talking about the the
mimosa webworm and the honeylocus. Iremember some fens of ours had this huge
honey locus that the two of themactually, that they had by their patio
and had gotten that on there.And we were there one night and the

(09:28):
uh, they were dropping out ofthere. I'm sorry for laughing coming down
on these laughs. No, Andit was kind of it was like all
of a sudden, they're jumping uplike what what's going on? The doo
a little parachuting out of there.So what happens is when the caterpillars two
times actually at two points they mightdo this. One is when they're about

(09:54):
to pew paid very often they willstart dropping out. Now they don't have
to do that, they can easilypew pay within the nes. But sometimes
they will spin down because they're greatsilk makers, right, yeah, yeah,
they'll be spinning down. And othertimes it'll happen if they run out
of food. So if you lookup in the tree and it's just completely

(10:16):
uh and the foe. I almostuse the word to foliated, but that's
not quite right because the foliated,you know, the means the leafless are
gone. But in this case,no, the leaves, the leaflets are
all up there. Leaves are there, they're just wrapped up in silk and
they're all brown. If they're outof food, they'll start spinning down on
silk threads hoping to find something.I think I told you this story.

(10:41):
It's been probably twenty years ago.I did a sight visit because it sounded
apocalyptic. It was almost exactly thesame situation as with your friends. A
couple of big locust trees. OhI did it, didn't I? Honey
locust trees. And the homeowner saidthat that the real problem was they were

(11:01):
right next to a patio, bigpatio area with a pool, and they,
oh yeah, they couldn't even goout. So I arrived because I
just thought I have to swim,yes, swimming trunks and snow gold and
you know, those little water wings. I was all ready to go.

(11:22):
I got there and and and thehomeowner had on this, she had on
this really big sun hat, youknow, and I'm you know, big,
you know this all sun hats,you know. And and she came
around the side of the house toopen the gate so that I could you
know, go back and see thesituation, and literally hanging off her hat

(11:45):
was like three caterpillars dangling. Andyeah, because the room was you know,
the room, the brand was sowide, she didn't and of course
that was a little startling to ohmy goodness, this really is a problem.
You know, they're hanging off people'sthat's what threw the hat. Yeah,
that's but that's kind of you know, that's really one of the big

(12:07):
things being a nuisance pest. Andof course, you know, you'll get
a lot of other things happening too. Eventually, you know, you start
having pieces of those nests fall apartand so on. But they don't hang
in there until the winter and andyou know, kind of add ornamental value
if they're covered in snow, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm trying to make something out ofnothing. But here here's the challenge.

(12:31):
First of all, we don't typicallysee them until we see their nests.
I mean, it's just I mean, I'm the same way i've in
the past years. Now, ourpopulations in Greater Cincinnati are just they're they're
basically just not around here this year. But uh, but we've had some

(12:52):
very high populations in different parts ofCincinnati. The city of Wyoming several years
ago had many several years in arow with fairly high populations. But again,
they don't show up. The nestdon't become evident until much late,
you know, about this time ofyear, and by the time they become

(13:13):
evident, there's really not a lotwe can do about it. If you
tried spraying the tree, the insecticidesare not going to likely to penetrate that
dense silk webbing. Now a personmay be able to use an injectable if
they deem it to be that muchof a problem. And again in a

(13:35):
nuisance as a nuisance past, forexample, in the homeowners situation, they
had suffered at least one year previouswith the same thing. And of course
in the dog days of summer,you kind of want to use a pool,
right, So yeah, kind of. So they ended up getting in

(13:56):
touch with an arborius who did makean application of a have a systemic.
Of course, you have to bevery careful with that because you want to
make sure that the systemic lists caterpillars. We do have a lot of systemics,
like the primary one amid a clopridthat was widely used for amla ashboard

(14:18):
that doesn't really affect caterpillars, butthere are others that do affect caterpillars.
And in that case, they wereable to clean it up pretty fast.
They able to get back into thepool, which kind of surprised me,
to be honest, aroun that wasthe first time I ever saw that that
kind of response. But in general, they don't hurt the trees. I

(14:39):
know that. I know that's probablysome of the listeners thinking, well,
Joe, if you have two orthree years of complete, you know,
loss of leaves, what does thatmean. The good news is that it's
almost August, and when we startseeing the foliation late in the season,
we're a little bit less concerned.The later, I hate to say it
this way, the later the betterbecause the trees have had plenty of time

(15:03):
to produce carbohydrates to store them tobe able to support regrowth the following season.
But with the mossa webworm, typicallyyou don't have more than maybe two
possibly three years before the three peaspredators, parasitoids, and pathogens show up

(15:24):
to crash the populations. And youand I watched this for many many years,
haven't we. They'll be a veryheavy area and then next year there's
nothing. So we typically don't thinkof these as being a major piss relative
to the overall health of the tree, but they do make trees look bad.

(15:46):
And of course if you have apool. I guess the taken home
was don't wear a sun hat.Yeah, yeah, really you know what
we did at my friend's house andwas over their deck, so then they
that's where they hung out all thetime and grilled. We just took it.
Really. We used the I'll addto your three p's. We use
the g h the garden hose.Yeah, with a strong stream of water.

(16:11):
Well, now that's interesting, andwe would just blow those yeah,
blow those nests right out of thereand that real water slide there you go,
and that that really did reduce uh, the issues and uh, you
know they did it on just onthe basically on the side where the deck
was. It took care of it. So well, now that's that's so
you almost went the way of GARYT. Solovan's patented powerwashers. Powerwashers the powered

(16:38):
them out of there with the gardenhose. It didn't work, though,
that's very interesting. I really well. And of course if it's these are
on small trees, which is uh, I should have said that actually now
that I'm bout out of time,But the listeners may be saying, I'll
wait a second, Joe, whichwhat kind of trees are we talking about?
You know, big trees can takethe foliation like this if you've planted

(17:02):
a honeylocus in recent years, Uh, you know, small trees have have
more of a problem because yeah,they're just they don't have quite the resources
and so on. But then withsmall trees, you can just reach up
there and pull the nests out.You know, I actually did this on
a small a couple of small treesin the Wyoming area, and and I

(17:23):
was able to pull the nest withoutactually getting rid of a lot of the
leaflets. So you know, Igot rid of the caterpillars, and then
these leaves, the compound leaves kindof sprung back out, and of course
they had a little damage, butyou know, I was able to pull
the you know, carefully pull thenest for the caterpillars out, and then

(17:44):
I did the patented steps. Idid a caterpillar two steps and just and
we sometimes forget that's a very effectiveway to manage pests. And so far,
I've never had a population become resistantto that. So far, there's
still time. If it ever happens, I'm gonna flee the state. I

(18:07):
mean I think I would, Yeah, I would, yeah. Never see
jump Buggy Joe Boggs ever again.Buggy Joe Boggs, always a pleasure,
great information, and we will talkto you next Saturday. Ron, you
have a fantastic week. Take careby you all right, Bye bye,
Buggy Joe Bogs again the website by g L dot OSU dot EU.
Quick break, we come back.We'll jump into the guarding phone lines at

(18:30):
a two to one WTVN eight hundredand sixty ten WTVN. Here on news
radio six y ten WTVN eight twoto one WTVN eight hundred and six y
ten at WTVN taking your calls comingup at the top of the hour.
We were at the convention Center acouple of weeks ago Cultivate, huge international

(18:52):
event trade show. You see newplants, new equipment, new greenhouse things
and all that. And there wasa new tool there. And every now
and then somebody will show up witha new tool that they've invented, and
it's called the earthlifter, and it'sbasically a garden fork spading fork, and
it has this thing welded on theback of it round it so that it's

(19:17):
and it's especially designed so that youbarely have to push down on the handle
to get it to lift things out, like if you're lifting out potatoes or
garlic or whatever it may be.Or if you use that to like lightly
till, you know, not reallytilling, but to crack the soil to
kind of loosen it and break itup, how you know you do that,
and that can be a lot topull back on that thing, and
you know, hurt your back andall that. Well, this new earthlifter

(19:41):
tool you don't have to worry aboutthat, and it's really cool. And
then if you've got like a raisedbed and all you know, and and
at the beginning of the spring seasonyou're getting ready to prep it so you
can start to plant it. Youcan use this thing and just kind of
barely pull back on it and itbreaks the soil for you. It's really
interesting. Anyway. It was developedand put together by Neil bevil Cooke,
bev bevil Aqua, Bevloqua's tough oneto say, bevl aqua for me anyway,

(20:07):
And he's going to talk about thatthis morning. It was as a
matter of fact, you got allkinds of raving reviews and everybody was standing
around while he was using it andexplaining it. And he's going to tell
us more about it coming up thetop of the hour. In the meantime,
taking your calls at eight two toone WTV and Don, Good morning,
morning, Ron. How you doinggood in yourself? Well, we're

(20:29):
okay. Hey, we have aquestion. It's been maybe a month or
so and I'm not sure, butwe had a burning bush put in back
beside our deck and unbeknownst to us, I'm not sure if it was rabbits
or deer, but they kind ofchewed it down to kind of the nubs.

(20:55):
Okay, and there. It appearto me, as little as I
know that, I think it's stillalive. I mean, there's some leaves
on it, and there's some othergreenery there, and I was wondering,
is there something that I can gosomewhere Zettler's, et cetera and get to

(21:22):
put on it, to maybe gooseit to get it to come back.
Good question. And here's the deal. Rabbits love those, and they'll come
up and just take those right down. I've seen rabbits prune burning bush.
They'll stand up on their hind legsand take those off and kind of do
a little hand pruning for you.Mouth pruning is what it boils down to.

(21:42):
But they're really really bad at doingthat, so that and they use
and think of good about burning bushis the fact that they recover, actually
can recover very nicely when they're cutback really hard. So you get these
old established burning bush, they getit way out of control. We go
in and we cut them back realhard, and they just flushed right back
out again. Now, this onebeing a newly planted one, not really

(22:06):
rooted in well at all, soit's going to take it at a little
bit more time. But it willor should recover from what you're telling me,
should be fine. We start wekind of look to stop feeding when
we get into August because we reallydon't want to push a lot of new
growth out as we get into September, because we wanted to start to harden

(22:26):
off for the fall season and beready for the for the spring seat or
the winner and then going into thespring. So at this stage in the
game, don I think I wouldconcentrate on making sure it's watered when we
when you don't get good rainfalls,keep it as healthy as possible. That
way, if you've got a watersoluble fertilizer like a root starter, roots

(22:47):
stimulant, you can use something likethat around it. That's you know,
not going to really push a wholelot, but you know it's a nice
light feeding. And then I wouldlook to either feed it sometime in mid
to late fall or just whole offand do it in the springtime. And
when that new growth is coming downin the spring, that's when you can
really start to push it and tryto push out you know a little bit

(23:07):
more at that point. But rightnow we're almost getting right at that age
where we aren't really starting to encourageand woody plants a lot of anymore of
the new growth, and now startingto let him slow down, harden off
and get ready for the fall season. Okay, and two feet it then?
Would that would if I mixed insome miracle grow into a pail of

(23:32):
water with perfect absolutely perfect yep,absolutely perfect. You know, I could
have heard anything with the miracle growing. It's water soluble. It's hard to
you know, put too much on, but just do a gallon, do
a gallon's worth, mix it up, pour it on water to make sure
you water it well so that's notdry when you pour it on there.
Uh and that should be more thanenough for you. And if you want
to do it again in the fall, mid to late fall, do it

(23:55):
and of course hit it in thespring. Okay, So we could do
it now, yeah, I meanthat's that's not going to push a lot,
so yeah, to do that,but otherwise we're not really at this
stage. We're getting, like Isaid, to that point where we're not
looking to push a lot of newgrowth on these plants. Okay, thank
you, sir. I appreciate youall right, don good good luck with
it. Appreciate the call, allright, quick break, we come back.
Phone lines are over for you ateight two to one wtv IN here

(24:18):
on news radio six' ten WTVN. Finally starting to get a few reports
out there of tomato hornworms. Mytomatoes have holes in them, and then
the foliage is going away, andyou know something's eating them all up,
and what's going on? And youtalk about hornworms and then say go,
you know, just got to takeyour time and look. And when people

(24:40):
find the tomato hornworms on their tomatovines, they're just like, oh my
gosh, I cannot believe I didnot see that thing, because it's the
size of my finger. They're huge, and there's two different types that will
will do that well, and they'lldefoliate a tomato and eat your tomatoes up
in a matter just a few days. But things to look for, obviously

(25:02):
the folies being disappearing, the holesin the tomatoes. If you look below
that, they're feces, pretty goodsized little balls that you'd notice, you'll
stand out. They are a darkcolor, almost black to brown, and
you can notice those as well.But then you start to look for the
caterpillar and you can't find it,and it's like, where is that thing,
and all of a sudden, thereit is hanging on to the stem

(25:23):
and it looks just like the stemand it's crazy. But there are two
different types types that we'll see,and these are sphinx boss by the way,
caterpillars for sphinx moss, but tobaccohornworm and tomato hornworm. And the
interesting thing is we probably see moretobacco hornworms on the tomatoes, and they'll
get on peppers and other things too, more the tobaccos than we do on

(25:45):
the than we do the tomato hornworms. Go figure, I don't get
that one. But to tell thedifference between the two, the tobacco hornworm
has a red tail or a littlehorn on the back of it. I'll
see that doesn't make sense because thetomato hornworm has a black or blue tail.
It seems like it would be theother way around, but it isn't.

(26:08):
So you know, keep that inmind. But again, it doesn't
matter which one you have. Theycan do a number and you just pick
them off and do the smash ortoss or whatever it may be. Now,
if you find them on there andthey have these little white things sticking
up out of their backs, it'slike little white capsules all on their backs.
They've been infested with a parasitic wasp. They lay their eggs and they

(26:33):
actually hang on the outside. Thelarvae do and feed on the caterpillar,
so they eventually they stop eating.They almost paralyze the thing and it just
sits there as they feed on itand finally hatch out. So they're actually
taking care of them for you.So if you find one with those on
its back, leave it on theplant, let it do its thing,

(26:53):
and you wind up not having todo anything. The easiest thing to do
with those is just to pick themoff and take care of them that way.
Don't worry about spraying. I mean, spinosa and bet and all that
stuff takes care of them. Butyou can pick them off and take care
of them that way. All right. But again, tobacco hornworm. Tomato
hornworms. They're out there now,lots of reports of them this week.
So watch your tomatoes especially. Theylove them, eating the foliage all a

(27:17):
sudden, big holes in your tomatoes, which squirrels will do as well.
Sometimes birds will do that occasionally,and then you'll see the feces underneath those
areas where they've been feeding and that'susually the giveaway. Then start looking and
then all of a sudden you seeit and you're like, how did I
miss that? To the gardening funnellines, We shall go again, gurn
good morning, Hey, good morning, thanks for taking my call. Ron
my pleasure. Yep. So Ihave a lot of daisies, like just

(27:42):
white white daisies, and this yearthere's a lot of foliage and there's no
there's no flowers on any of mydaisies. You know, I have noticed,
and this is funny, this pastweek I've noticed because Shasta, the
becky Shasta daisy one of my favoriteperennials. But as I look at where

(28:07):
I know there are patches of them, there aren't many flowers on them right
now. And I just seriously justnoticed that this week that I'm not seeing
because usually it's they start to flowerand people try to dead head them and
they really mess up the plant andall night is hard to figure out how
to do that. But I amwith you, I have not noticed as
many flowers on those as well.The plants look great, the foliage looks

(28:33):
good, but not that many flowers. So I don't I don't know,
I don't have an answer I needto start looking up close a little bit
more whether or not they're going tocome along. Don't feed them or do
anything like that, just let themdo their thing. It could be environmental.
Something may have held them up asfar as the way the weather's been.
The heat may have blasted them alittle bit. I don't know,

(28:53):
but I just want to let youknow, gurn and I have noticed that
myself and going up to take alittle closer look to see, if you
know, if that's something I usuallyif that happens and I see it,
you know, community wise wide,it's typically something environmental, whether it be
the temperatures or whatever it may be. But that would be a first because
they're usually very consistent bloomers. Doyou have time for one more question about

(29:17):
your other topic? Sure? Mydally is I plant Dahias every year,
and usually in my beds, I'llput tons of leaf molts from an oak
and a maple and till it in. I didn't get it really well tilled
in this year, so my dalisare not performing at all, and I
wonder if that has something to dowith not getting enough mixture, not enough

(29:40):
nutrition of any ideas on that,you know, the thing about the oak
leaves, and I liked I dothat too. I like them finally ground
when I do, you know,till them back into the soil. I
think it's a great way to goactual nutrition. The nutrition will love you
level, isn't isn't all that highfor that? You get the organic matter

(30:00):
back into the soil and adding somenutrients, but again you may have to
supplement with it. Do you doany feeding at all? Yeah, miracle
grow, Okay, that would bethe you know again, keep up what
you've been doing there. But otherwiseI don't. I don't know why that
would have would have just slowed themdown or you know, they are not

(30:22):
performing as well again because I don'tthink that has anything to do with it.
I don't know. I don't haveenough. Well that's two in a
row, Gern, thanks a lot, Ronald the other day. Appreciate the
call. I don't know what totell them on that. As you know,
adding organic matter is absolutely wonderful.Love it sometimes, but don't count

(30:45):
on that always as being your nutritionalvalue. If those plants need a little
bit more nutrition, because that's agood organic matter, but not necessarily giving
you the nitroent phosphors poduct that theyactually would need. All right, quick
break, we come back. Wewill talk to our good friend, the
inventor of the earth Earthlifter tool.If you want to learn more about it,
go to earthlifter dot com here onnews radio six ten WTVN MHM