Tomato Blossom Abort and Horn Worms

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I noticed something on my tomatoes in the blossom clusters.

I have seen this before, yet never had the time to find the cause. I tried to Google a cause and a remedy, but I could not seem to come across the right keywords or search words for the problem.

I grabbed my camera and decided to get some pictures of these tomato blossom “blossomless” stems and send them over to my county extension agent. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Here is what the “aborted” blossoms looked like:

On my tomato plants, there are several “clusters” of tomato blossoms. Some of them are all fruit bearing and doing perfectly well. But on the SAME plant, in another cluster area, there would be some tomato blossoms, and others that suddenly disappeared and left me with a stem that looked like someone had “clipped” it with a pair of scissors. No blossom, just the stem portion with the flower totally gone. There was a flower on each of those stems at one time. Just clipped off, just a tomato blossom stem with no flower. A flower that was once there.

Well, I remembered having read somewhere that sometimes a tomato plant will abort some parts of the fruit to give its food and attention toward developing the other tomato fruits. So maybe this was the tomato plant’s way of “aborting” fruit so it could develop the other fruits. But why only on certain clusters? Why not in every tomato blossom cluster area?

Just adjacent would be these perfectly luscious tomato blooms. Other than that, the plants were very healthy, well watered, no signs of stress. Luscious green foliage and beautifully formed tomato plants. No signs of any type of pest, I’m first thinking worm? But I could find no chewed foliage, and no sign of the dreaded tomato horn worm.

When I first described the problem to the extension agent over the phone, she thought it was the plant aborting some of the blossoms due to stress. Too much rain, not enough water, lack of fertilizer, too much fertilizer, anything causing stress to the plant.

After I sent her the picture, she said that is not aborted tomato blossoms. It is a tomato horn worm!

Well, when I first saw the problem on the tomato plants, remember I mentioned looking for a worm.

Most times when I find a tomato horn worm, the problem is easily caught when I see a tomato plant with chewed foliage. I check for this twice each day during tomato season on each plant. If you see chewed foliage, get your glasses and stare at that plant. The tomato horn worm is there, unless you have just a stem left cause you forgot to check this daily. He blends in so well with the plant, so he is very hard to see. Check undersides of leaves, look on the stem itself. The tomato horn worm can look just like a tomato stem! Look for where the last chewed area is, if he has not progressed further, then is most likely finishing up that area and getting ready to move to the undamaged area of the plant.

My problem is that I was looking for chewed tomato foliage. I was not really looking for simply a chewed off blossom. And it could be that I already found the culprit and picked him off and destroyed him, and that is why the problem ceased almost immediately after it begun.

I am going back out to do a more thorough inspection, and if I find the culprit, I will post his picture on this blog. She told me that before they go on a tomato plant eating binge, they can be roly poly sized and green. They are much easier to find when they have eaten half of your plant, but we want to find them BEFORE that stage.

When you have a garden, you have to check it daily. A tomato horn worm can destroy an entire plant in a day. When you find one, kill him. But do check your plants daily. If you are going to be out of town, spray your plants with an insecticide such as Sevin or ask a friend or relative to check them for you. You might also ask the friend or relative to water, also, especially if you live in the Deep South like I do. It is June 1 and the temperature today is already 90 degrees and it is not even noon here. Imagine this place in July and August. Yikes!

Happy Tomato Growing!
~ The Ranchers Daughter