Dang goats,army worms,stink bugs,leaf footed bugs!

[Tracydr]

So,my tomatoes were limping along this summer due to infestations of leaf-footed bugs,army worms and stink bugs. Other than the damage to the fruits the plans looked decent,considering I still don't have water to the garden and we've had a drought all summer.
Until the darn goats figured out that they love the taste of tomato leaves. It looks like I've been hit by thousands of tomato worms!
Just got the garden fenced this AM so that I can protect them and try to get the leaves and blossoms back for a hopeful fall crop.
There are a lot of leaves coming out on the stems. Should I prune the plants back to decrease the amount of defoliated plant or just let them start leading out at each branch and leave them the size they are? I'm going to give them some fish/kelp today and also spray for bugs with some safer soap/neem/BT. Any other suggestions?

[b54red]

I found my biggest problem with the drought and heat for the past month has been spider mites. I found the strong Permethrin spray effective against the leaf footed bugs I found on my bell peppers. If the army worms are really bad and you don't have a lot of ripe fruit or near ripe fruit and you want to get rid of the worms fast you can use Sevin and they will all be dead in a few hours; but make sure to do it very late in the day so as to not kill bees. I had them really bad a few years ago and had to resort to Sevin because the BT just wasn't keeping up with them but this year no such worm problems so far.

If they are as defoliated as you say then you might want to give them a good dose of fertilizer to get them going good again. I would use Texas Tomato Food but Miracle Grow 18-18-24 is also good to use in that situation. I would also really water them heavily every few days to encourage blossoms from dropping in the heat.

Bill

[Tracydr]

I have only sticks right now. I did remove the most infested tomatoes,with little colonies of baby Lf bugs. I'll give the TTF a try, I have a sample package on my desk.
I do have some concentrated permethrin for the horses but I'll try some neem and soap first. I suspect the bugs may be moving on to more exciting crops since there's no tomatoes to eat right now.
Our temperatures are moderating this week but no blossoms to drop,since they were eaten.
The plants I worked on yesterday do have quite a few tiny leaves trying to come out. I'm starting to cut everything down to 1-2 of the healthiest stems in hopes of conserving some plant energy to grow more leaves and blossoms.
Thankfully,we should have an extra long,mild fall with the El Niño this year!

[b54red]

I used a concentrated form of Permethrin. Appoximately an ounce of 10% Permethrin in a gallon of water and it wiped them out at least for a while. I know they are on some of my neighbors vegetation and eventually some will move back in. Actually I was surprised it worked as well as it did. It really only works if you hit most of the leaf footed bugs with at least a bit of spray or mist because once it dries even at the stronger dose it will not last long. I tried soap sprays to no avail earlier. I think you have to have a really strong soap solution to get them and that will harm the leaves if sprayed all over them. You could mix up a little hand spray bottle with a very concentrated spray of soap and maybe add just a little rubbing alcohol and walk around and hit the ones you see. I did this a few years ago before the stink bugs got so bad and it was quite effective on them.

If you don't have any blooms on your plants now then it is gonna be close beating the cold if you can get a good set of blooms in the next week or so.

Bill