Something is eating my plants?

[negardener]

Ok. So last year, I successfully grew tomatoes, cucumbers, snap peas, and a couple of green beans. This year, I put seedlings in the ground as they developed true leaves and within a week something was chewing on them and several had shriveled and died. At first it was just crawling plants but I have noticed some issues on my tomatoes and beans now too.

I finally got smart and propped the crawling plants up for now, but there is still SOME chewing going on. I have noticed opaque balls of something - hard, and they are a whitish opaque color. They start off small but grow to be about half the size of a popcorn kernel. I don't know if they are related or not but they look like something that could hatch something else....

Any ideas on what it could be/how to deal?

[tomatogarden]

Maybe its bugs. I use to have ants in my soil, I've tried many ways to get rid of them because they are destroying my plants. I have tried placing some cucumber peels around the plants, it helps a little, because the bugs hate cucumber peels. Or you can spray some lemon juice on it, it'll kill a bug or two.

[davidbkeegan]

sounds like bugs for sure. Could even be spiders

[Chris]

spiders are predators, they don't eat plants.

[swimmer5555]

They are probably hiding and or the same color as your leaves. Gotta look carefully. Had same problem with my palm tree and finally saw thier were two large grasshoppers hiding in there eating it.

Scott

[tatws]

Spiders ! LOL

But spider mites are a possibility, although not related to Spiders :rolleyes:

More likely to be aphids.

From your description, if they look little white tufts of cotton, then it will be Mealybugs.

[nofeargardener]

Not sure if you've gotten to the bottom of this issue or not. But as I thought about it for a minute this morning, I thought it might be worth getting a batch of ladybugs and putting them in your garden. I'm told they can do wonders for certain insect problems (including aphids, mites, and mealybugs)

The key is when you get them, to cool them down a bit so that they're slow moving. Then, put them in your garden toward the end of the day, so they're likely to stay put.

Let us know what you find out k? hang in there! :)

[Cody Wellard]

I also have something devouring my pole beans, they were growing great guns and I went to water them today, the leaves are only half there, I will give them a spray with lemon juice and hope for the best.:)