Sammy, my squirrels love my tomatoes, too. People laugh when they see it, but the little squirrels will climb the cage, sit at the top, and eat cherry tomatoes. Sometimes they'll grab one, and run to the shed, climb the shed, sit at the top and eat it. I've even watched them carry tomatoes almost as big as they are! I don't know how they hold onto it with their teeth, but they are ingenious little critters. I don't mind them having the cherry tomatoes, but I sure don't like it when they take a bite of a big one and leave it one the vine. I guess the best way to protect them is to cover the cages with some netting.

Well, I guess I can just share my misery. The cages hold the stems, but they go out the holes. The fence wraps around the pot. Even if I make the area larger, I have to direct the tomato stems out the openings.

I believe (and hope) that the squirrel problems have been worse because y'all have been in drought. The squirrels might back off a bit if your drought conditions end. To some extent, the ants might be related to the drought issues as well. Usually, if ants are bothering tomato plants, it is because there is a general lack of moisture and they are using the tomato plants as a water source. Another reason that ants might plague tomato plants would be if your tomato plants have aphids and the ants are coming to the plants for the honeydew secretions left on the plants by the aphids.

Sometimes putting out a flat pan of water or birdbath that provides water to the squirrels meets their moisture needs enough that they leave the tomatoes alone. Sometimes it makes no difference.

The black bugs, if they are eating tomatoes, might be blister beetles Or, if they are a dark brown to brownish-black, they might be leaf-footed bugs. Both of these pests are worse in my garden in hot, dry spells and particularly in bad drought years. I had a moderate outbreak of leaf-footed bugs and blister beetles in my garden last autumn after our previously wet weather turned extremely dry in July and August. I carried my garden scissors with me all the time and snipped each blister beetle and leaf-footed bug in half when I saw it. That's the chemical-free pest control method for me that works best with those two specific pests. I hate to kill blister beetles because they eat tons of grasshopper eggs, but I don't like losing garden produce to them either. Thus, I ignore the blister beetles when there's just as few of them as long as they aren't bothering tomatoes, but if there is a lot and they're doing lots of damage, I kill as many of them as I can.

A possible solution to the squirrel problem might be to spray the plants with hot pepper wax insect repellent. Since the squirrels don't like the hot peppers, this might deter them in the same way it deters some insects. This is one example of hot pepper wax:

Hot Pepper Wax Insect Repellent

The reason I think the hot pepper wax insect repellent also might repel squirrels is that research has shown that squirrels stop stealing bird seed from bird feeders if that bird seed has been coated with a hot pepper product, though I believe in the case of the bird seed, the product used to treat it probably is not a wax but likely is just hot pepper tea.

If I was having a squirrel problem, I'd probably put bird netting over entire rows of caged tomatoes, using the U-shaped earth staples sold for use with landscape fabric to hold the netting down close to the ground. Would it be hugely annoying to have to raise the netting in order to harvest and then to reattach the netting to the ground? Yes, of course it would be, but if it would save the tomatoes from the squirrels I'd do it.

Unfortunately there are many pests, both insect and animal, that like tomatoes and you just have to fight them in whatever way you can.

Thank you Dawn. I will try more water, and definitely the bird netting. I will have to price it, but I do have the fencing material to help hold it, and I only plant my tomatoes in pots. Once I had 27. Now I am going for 10. You just cannot beat the tomato sauce, especially in the winter.

Sammy

You're welcome, Sammy. I agree with you---you cannot beat anything made with your own tomatoes, particularly in winter when fresh home-grown tomatoes are just a distant memory. Good luck fighting the pests.