Are they spider mites? It's hard to tell from the pic.

I can't tell from the picture either. But in the first photo, it looks too large to be a spider mite.

In the second photo the little dot under the bright red bug/mite looks like the size of a spider mite.

I'm more interested in the first photo. The small almost clear/amber colored specks.I cant tell if it is sap or maybe a immature pest.

The magnification may be throwing me off to the actual size.

It's hard for me to do much research on my home computer since i'm on dial up and it takes too long to load pictures.

Aphids? They can be green, red, brown........
Is there any webbing?

My first guess was spider mite. The other stuff on the leaves looks like eggs to me.

http://homeharvest.com/homeharvest2000pics/spidermitesfullsize.jpg

jo

I googled stuff and these are two spot red spider mites. I put my extension tube on my 24mm lens and it makes a very cool macro lens.

So far I have found these, adult aphids, flea beetles, and thrips on my tomatoes. I'm still working on disease ID. I don't know if my plants have any diseases at this point but I want to be able to catch things early.

I have had success with neem oil when battling spider mites and flea beetles. Good Luck!

Jo

tigerdawn - Relax. Those tomatoes will likely produce even with a few problems. If they start to look bad just make sure you have new plants for the fall. Mine get some disease every year, but I get lots of tomatoes before the plants die.

I have mixed feelings about spraying anything for spider mites. Here is why:

There are beneficial mites who eat the spider mites. In my garden the beneficial mites and lady bugs pretty much control the spider mites and keep their population from exploding. that doesn't mean I don't have spider mites. You're always going to have some of them around in our climate unless you are nuking your property with heavy, heavy doses of miticides. If you spray your tomato plants (or anything else) to kill the spider mites, you kill the beneficial mites who eat them, so that when your spider mite population resurges, it repopulates long before the beneficial mites do. The reason why is that the beneficial mites don't start reproducing until they have a good population of spider mites to feed their young, so they rebound much more slowly than the plant-eating mites. Even though I didn't understand the 'how' and the 'why' of the above when I was a child, I saw this exact mechanism at work in my dad's garden for many years.

My dad always had the most beautiful, full, lush, heavily-producing tomato plants you can imagine in May and June. By July in our zone 8 climate, the spider mites had arrived in large numbers and the war was on! He would spray the plants heavily with one of the miticides commonly available to home gardeners at that time---when I was a teenager and young adult, it was Kelthane. I don't know if that is what he used in the 1960s when I was younger or if he used something else. For a week or so after he sprayed the miticide, there seemed to be no spider mites. Then, all of a sudden they were back and in much larger numbers than before. So, he'd spray again. And again. And again. Each time the response was that he had more and more and more and more. He also was regularly spraying other pesticides so it is likely he was nuking all his beneficial insects too.

Because wet tomato foliage in high temps is prone to some diseases, his plants would then develop Septoria Leaf Spot because he was constantly spraying them. Between the Septoria Leaf Spot and spider mites, it dind't matter what he sprayed. His plants were done producing. We never understood why spraying made the mites repeatedly come back worse and worse each time back then, but now that we better understand the role of beneficial insects of all kinds, including beneficial mites, it is easy to see how his garden's ecosystem got out of whack and everything went downhill. His experience in part motivated me to learn how to work with nature and not against it. Now, when I see spider mites, which actually appeared here in March or April this year when we started hitting the upper 80s and 90s, I just shrug and say to myself that the beneficial mites and lady bugs will take care of them....and they generally do.

I am not one to worry about pests or diseases too much because I have learned the hard way that often any intervention I attempt has unforeseen consequences, in the same way that my dad's spraying of the miticide ultimately gave him more spider mites and not less. My approach is not for everyone, I realize, but I very, very rarely spray anything on any of my plants whatsoever and I get huge crops every year. I think it is because I am letting the natural processes work the way they are supposed to instead of trying to control nature. I get the best results when I work with Mother Nature and not against her.

I'm not saying don't spray or that you shouldn't or whatever, merely pointing out that spraying is not the great cure-all that some people believe and that "there's (with an apology to any cat-lovers or cats reading this) more than one way to skin a cat", as my dad used to say.

I almost never use neem oil because it can smother beneficial insects and I'd rather have the beneficial insects out there working in my garden 24/7 than to not have them. That's not an attack on neem either, but just a reminder that while neem has its uses, it also can be damaging to your garden's beneficial insect life.

I wasn't panicking or planning to spray anything. I just want to know what I'm seeing.

Black cherry is the one that looks the most stressed of all. It has crispy lower leaves with dead spots all over and the new growth is small with upcurled edges.

I know. I just wanted to stop the panic on anyone's part before it started.

In May we usually start seeing all sorts of foliar leaf spots on tomato foliage and there's one million and one questions, many of them unanswerable, because just about every single thing under the sun causes spots and discoloration on tomato foliage. It is the same way with pests. They start showing up and everyone gets the urge to spray when generally the plants are just fine if we do nothing at all.

Black Cherry looks more like environmental stress than anything else. Too much wind, too much rain at once, etc. As long as the new growth comes out healthy, I'd ignore its current condition. Plants grow fine and survive most things on their own with no intervention from us. I think many people worry and fret to much and intervene too quickly when it is perfectly fine to let Mother Nature take its course and deal with things in its own way. Plants have grown forever without excessive (or often any) help from us humans.

One problem I do expect to see on plants in Oklahoma any time now, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if some folks are seeing it already, is edema on some of their plants, both ornamental and annual veggie type things. Edema is common in excessively wet periods. It is one of those things that has to run its course too since there's no way we can suck the moisture out of the soil or the plants.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Edema on Tomatoes

Last year I sprayed neem preventativley. This year I only spray if I see a problem and no beneficials (I can't smother good bugs that aren't there).

So far I've only neemed my rosemary and a few tomatoes with a severe spider mite infestation.

I am trying to incorporate Dawn's live and let live philosphy into my small garden while making sure that nothing is overrun by pests....I am gradually working and moving into a much more natural approach, but right now my garden still needs occasonial organic help. :)

I am glad that you identified your pest!

Jo

Jo,

I hope you know I am not criticizing your use of Neem. I would defend to the death your right to use it. I just want to point out that everything we use tends to have at least two effects---the positive one we're seeking and some unintended side effect we might not have been expecting.

When we first moved here, we had so many pests. You just cannot even imagine it. We made the decision to avoid chemicals and I feared I'd find it impossible to garden. Instead, the tide slowly turned. At times I was perplexed by the organic journey though.

In the early 2000s we had green lacewings simply everywhere. I mean everywhere. I greatly appreciated their presence since they are so very beneficial and eat so many pest insects.

Then one year, maybe in 2006 or 2007, I noticed we were seeing fewer and fewer green lacewings, and finally practically none at all. I was so upset. What was happening to all my green lacewings? I wasn't spraying anything at all so I didn't think I was killing them. Yet, despite their absence, the pests were not a real problem. Finally, it dawned (ha! pun intended) on me that the green lacewings were abundant in those years because we were overrun with pests. The lacewings left once there wasn't enough of a food supply left for them. So, their disappearance actually was a good sign.

I rarely see a green lacewing anywhere near my garden, though I often see them out in the pastures. I kind of miss having them hanging around underfoot, but am relieved that the garden's ecosystem is balanced enough that there's not a lot of food for them.

One thing that really made me believe organics was the right path was during the severe grasshopper outbreak of the early 2000s. Surrounding ranchers sprayed their pastures like crazy to kill the grasshoppers. If their chemical pesticides worked, you couldn't tell it at all. However, all the bluebirds died and I believe it was from eating bugs sprayed with the chemical pesticides. We didn't see a single bluebird for about 3 years. It was depressing. If I ever feel tempted to spray any sort of chemical pesticide for any reason, I am going to remind myself of the three years we had no bluebirds.

Dawn