Two suggestions.

Plant some eggplant b'c they prefer eggplant over tomatoes and so are considered a trap crop.

Second suggestion is to plant lots of radishes b'c flea beetles love them as well and they can servie as a trap crop also.

Carolyn

I wish I could do that but I'm actually growing my tomato plants inside of a container.

Not a home remedy but a shot of liquid sevin will get rid of them. I usually only have problems with flea beetles at the transplant stage before they flower, after they start flowering usually no more problem although this year had some problems when my plants quit flowering due to the heat. I know this is "not organic" and I try to stay as organic as possible, but I don't plant my garden for the bugs to eat! Good Luck

Keith

Dust with Safer's diatomaceous earth....and keep dusted after rains...seems to keep the stinkbugs away too.

Checkers, liquid Sevin or powder Sevin is a systemic, and I don't think it's a good idea to use systemics on anything edible.

Below I've linked to a general Google Search on control of Flea Beetles on Tomatoes, and by extension potatoes and eggplant.

I think if you spend an hour or so reading some of them you'll find some excellent ways to control them.

As for me, even if your tomatoes are in containers I'd plant radishes around the base of the plants. I'm not all that stubborn, but flea beetles are usually a problem early in the season and then go away by which times the radishes would have done their job.

But do look at some of the alternatives from the link below.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Flea Beetles/tomatoes, etc

Carolyn,

but flea beetles are usually a problem early in the season and then go away

That's what I said in my reply, I use the sevin at transplant time,if I didn't there wouldn't be any tomato plants left by the time radishes came up. When I found damage recently I didn't really worry. dc784 doesn't say what area or zone they're in, I know different areas have different problems...

If you can help with some kind of control of Red Spider Mite (other than Kelthane), which I also use, that would be appreciated. Thanks

Keith

I'm in nebraska - its getting toward the end of the season too which is weird because ive never had a problem with them this late before. I'm pretty sure their flea beetles too, small black beetles that jump when disturbed. I'll have to wait until morning to take a picture of the beetles BUT i do have a picture of the damage they've been doing. Before I saw the actual beetles someone said it was leaf hoopers but now that I've noticed all the beetles which there has been slowly growing in the number of them.
{{gwi:46892}}

darkcloud,
Your problem looks different than the damage I find with flea beetles. Here's a link from the pest problem solver at Planet Natural..."Flea Beetle Control."

Hope this helps,

Keith

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A garden is never so good as it will be next year. -- Thomas Cooper

hmmm well the description of the bug i see all over my tomatoes fits

Yes that does look like this image from google, but the image shows the typical shot holes to the leaf.

Keith

Here is a link that might be useful:

thats not a google picture thats a picture I took today.

{{!gwi}}

yea after some googling i found that, as well as i found out the culprit and im 100% positive this time because the pictures completely match as well as the damage pictures. flea hoppers, also found a good remedy - apparently they dont like garlic =D