Holes in my tomatoes.

Funky little egg.

I have the tiny little black bugs thing on cukes, too. No idea what they are, but they haven't seemed harmful. Now, the fungal disease of the foliage on your cucumber is Pseudoperonospora cubensis. You will have to use a fungicide if you want to control this disease. I use Daconil, but I don't know if that's for you. Not much you can do organically, other than keeping the leaves from getting wet, and even that doesn't help when the humidity amps up.

The damage to your tomato leaves could be anything from caterpillars to grasshoppers. Definitely insect damage. I'd get out there early in the morning, look for poo, and find the culprits that way.

I have no idea what could have laid that egg.

This is why we try to plant our veggie garden as early as possible before the gazillion of Florida bugs wake up from winter. The bugs bring all kinds of plant diseases which weaken the plant as they struggle from the heat of the blazing sun & the humidity. By June 1st I feel my spring garden is just about all finished up and only the veggies which enjoy the high heat and humidity can contend with the myriad of bugs & diseases. Mid July is when I start my seeds again for the fall planting outdoors on Sept 1st. Veggie gardening in Florida is a learning experience on what, when, how, & why for your immediate area. Try keeping a log so you can see what works best as you experiment with gardening in your area. I find even a short distance of 5 miles will make a huge difference of how your garden grows as compared with your neighbors/friends garden. Sorry I can't help on your specific plant diseases as I usually just give up on any plant in trouble this late in the season because once weakened it's tough to bring them back to health.

Lou

I wonder if your egg isn't from a lizard?

Here is a link that might be useful: Anole Eggs

The round egg-looking things might be fertilizer pellets like Osmocote, if you bought and planted potted plants.
Marcia

Thank you The Tradition. I looked it up and all of the images exactly match mine. I'm not sure what to use as a fungicide since the neem did nothing. Can you suggest any products that I might be able to go read about. I noticed it's also just starting in my watermelon patch which is also in the cucurbit family. I'm just starting to get lots of tiny melons and I'd hate to lose them. I started craving watermelon when I was doing chemo and eat at least one or two a week.

Thank you Lou too. After I got the boxes built and planted everything, I found out that I was months too late. I thought I would start seeds in Aug but July sounds even better.

I don't know if they're lizard eggs. They were just about everywhere that I dug and examined the soil. I started all of the plants from seeds and didn't use any fertilizer pellets. I used a mix of peat, composted manure, top soil and a little black cow when I filled the beds. I also bought a few bags of store mixed soil from a nursery. I wonder if they may have used fertilizer pellets ... hmmmmm

Hi Sunqueen

Sorry about all the problems that you are having with the cucumbers and the tomatoes. I try to plant early in the season all the warm crops. And try to be careful about not watering the leaves, with the rains we all get foliage diseases. At least if we plant early we get some harvest but the time disease and bugs hit us. Don't worry, eventually you will learn what is best for you, not only varieties but timing, this forum is good like that when you ask questions, you get answers. If you have fruit on the veggies, I would wait to harvest them and I would not spray anything since the disease is already there, fungicides work better as preventive early in the season, some are organic.
In the summer I have few things planted that can take the heat, it is better to wait for the fall to plant again.

Silvia

Going against the grain here - if you want to try to save your melons, you can try Actinovate or Serenade (both are organic). It's true that both of these are best used as disease preventatives. However, if the disease is only on a few of the older leaves, Actinovate or Serenade may prevent infection on the newer leaves (or slow down the rate of infection) and give your plant a fighting chance of outgrowing the disease.

For this to work, you will need to spray frequently, and dispose of infected leaves in the garbage - don't compost them.

You may or may not be able to find Actinovate or Serenade in your local area. I have not seen Actinovate anywhere local in my area. Of the big box stores, only HD carries Serenade, and only in a horribly wasteful (deliberately designed to be wasteful, IMO) hose end sprayer. I did find Serenade concentrate at a very good price at a local feed and seed - so you might check those, as well as locally-owned nurseries. There are a number of online places that sell them, too.

Good luck!

Lizard eggs are oval and white. I find them quite often in my potted plants in my greenhouse. It looks like a grasshopper is nibbling on your plants.

Silvia - you're the one who grows all of those gorgeous tomato plants in pots! I think I may switch strategies here and try that instead for my next planting. I was worried about nematodes and your method looks like it would fix some of that problem and would also free up the raised beds to grow other things.

The Tradition suggested that I go out earlier and look for poo. That's exactly what I did this morning. Everything was soaked from all of the rain we've had this weekend. I noticed brown spots on some leaves and thought they might be insects. Nope. It dissolved with touch. So I got my face in there and really started to examine the leaves. Guess what I found? Looks to me to be a cutworm. It matches all of the pictures I saw the other day when I googled 'tomato plants leaves tiny holes.' So now I know I'll have to put toilet paper collars around the baby plants in the next go-around. Some friends came for Easter and saw that I was trying to get seeds started in jiffy pots. They know I use k-cups and suggested that I save them, wash them well and use those instead. Well I have two giant bags full so I'll empty them and sprinkle the coffee grinds around the plants. Beyond that, I'll need to go read up about what to do next so that I don't lose my entire tomato crop this year. I was surprised that the plants were looking so nice and healthy and starting to flower considering most people told me that I really planted way too late.

As for the melons, I will go try to find some of that Serenade. Their web site lists FL vendors and the closest to me is Myakka City to the west or Port St Lucie to the east. I'm smack dab in the middle (of nowhere) here in Lake Placid. I live right on the border of So Central and Central FL - close to where Rts 70 and 27 meet. It's cattle and orange trees for as far as the eye can see. I miss living near the ocean! I was out on the watermelon patch this morning and counted 8 melons so far with a zillion flowers on the vines. The fungus has spread quite a bit since earlier in the week when I first noticed it was there too.

This whole first year has been an immense learning experience so far. I know to start seeds soon, prepare the soil better, collar young plants, be more aggressive with neem and other fungicides and strike BEFORE they can start. I'm sure I still have tons more to learn, but that's part of what makes this fun and rewarding.

Thanks again for all of the advice and suggestions!

Here's the little guy that I pulled off of my tomato plant this morning. I didn't stay out there to see if I could find more. I figured that one might be a pretty good indication of what is going wrong since almost all of the images that matched the pic of my tomato plants involved an attack of the killer cutworms!

I think what you have there is an armyworm, not a cutworm. In any case, you might want to think about using a little Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis).

I've had the same problem this time of year with cukes, in my case the tiny black bugs were spidermites. If you have a jewlers loupe or microscope you can make them out. Rub your finger on the bottom of the leaves if it leaves a brownish-red stain it is probably spidermites. Every year I chase them around the garden, from bean plants, to eggplant to cukes. You can try a strong spray of water everyday on the bottom side of the leaves, but they seem to come right back.

I've tried soaps, oil, neem, but they all end up burning the leaves in the hot Florida sun, I usally just pull them out and bag them.

If I could find a relatively safe insecticide that would wipe them out without poisoning myself I would give it a try,

Anyone else had any success eradicating spidermites?

The Tradition - thank you again! With everything that I read, they never mentioned armyworms. I looked them up and they match the photo I took. Wow, you really know a lot! I had to run errands earlier and stopped in our local hardware/garden store and got the last little bottle they had of Safer with Bt. It's been raining here since I got home so if it stops this evening, I'll mix some up and give the tomatoes a spray. I hope you don't get sick of hearing how much I appreciate your help!

Trying in FL - I just recently pulled out my jeweler's opti-visor headset for something I was working on. When it clears up outside I'll stick it on my head and shake some of the cuke leaves over a sheet of white paper. Good idea! I have implants in both eyes but I'm still Ms Magoo (even though the doc says I'm 20/20).

Can't a milk spray be used for fungal problems? I remember reading somewhere that diluted skim milk in a spray bottle prevents fungal infections.

I might be way off target, I read too much and wind up mixing things up so it is possible I read about a milk spray for something else!

Jane