Splendid photographs, Ed!

Thanks, Zoë!!! Since I had such a nice(?) assembly of the suckers I figured I might as well get some shots of them. The green ones are the only native ones in the bunch. The only one I'm not sure about is the 6th one…doesn't really check the box of any of the usual suspects.

I'm getting ready to rip those plants up. They're acting as a pretty good trap plant for the stink bugs right now. I've been wondering if it would be too awful to spritz the groups with some perfume called "RAID" (I think it's a French brand ) before I disturb them???

I see only one (what I would call "true") stink bug and an astounding assortment of leaf-footed bugs. Good grief, is that one tomato the local community center?

Not a fan of Raid. Can't advise you on that.

Me too.
If you go out while it's cool, you can catch by hand and feed to chickens.
After it warms up, they fly away too fast to easily catch.
At my house I start hand catching leaf-foot bugs when the poppies are in pod... If I start thinning them out early, there's less to bite the tomatoes.

I think might be two stink bugs in the photos…the second photo, a brown marmorated (imported) stink bug, and then the green ones (native).

Nah, I won't be using RAID , though I'm ready to nuke those suckers!!! I'd like to kill what's on the remaining plants before I pull the plants. If I spray I'll be removing the plants by the next day. I'm considering trying a permethrin/Pyrethrin of some type.

great photos, but OMG, so many bugs on the maters

I'm lucky that out here at the new place I don't have the assortment of bugs...yet...that I had at the old place. We have a breeze all the time here where at the old house we were down in a hole. A breeze there is 70mph elsewhere. So bugs loved it.

Intheswamp said:
...I've been wondering if it would be too awful to spritz the groups with some perfume called "RAID" (I think it's a French brand ) before I disturb them???

I may have shared this story in the past, but many years ago I was working in a small law office and we had been experiencing a bit of a problem with ants ... one morning I walked in and sniffed the air and asked the other secretary if they had finally had the office sprayed for the ants; turned out what I was smelling was her new perfume, "Poison."

@sallyg , those sap suckers were kinda concentrated on a couple of tomatoes. I'd taken out three of six plants and removed most of the tomatoes on two of the remaining three plants. So, the stink bugs were concentrating mostly on that one plant. But...it doesn't matter...the suckers are picky eaters and have to sample ALL of the tomatoes before they find one they like the best...then their taste might change and they decide to do some more taste testing!!!!

@pepper23 , how long have ya'll been at your new place? Moving from a bottom to a hilltop/higher elevation can indeed improve our creature comforts! But, sometimes those windshields are nice, like when it's 20F outside and a 30mph wind blowing!!! But (for us on our hill) we don't experience the really cold wind that often and the breezes that we get in the heat of the summer is *most* welcome!!! But, no relief from the bugs here.

@Weedwhacker , I'm glad I brought back fond memories for you! I read your post soon after getting up and got a big grin from it!!! I honestly think that I've smelled that particular perfume before, Poison...or, it might have been "Ode de Mace'" being as it made my eyes water up. So, did back out of that "perfume moment" gracefully or did you run screaming like your hair was on fire?

Ha, Poison...

Now, I wonder, if I had sprayed with Captain Jacks a few times, might I get ahead of the stink bugs? But the tomatoes themselves were so small and so few, I just gave up. It wasn't the year for me to focus on the garden. It's ok. There's always next crop or next year.

NMoasis said: I see only one (what I would call "true") stink bug and an astounding assortment of leaf-footed bugs. Good grief, is that one tomato the local community center?

Not a fan of Raid. Can't advise you on that.

I ended up buying some "Maggie's Farm Vegetable Garden Insect and Disease Control" spray. Wallyworld had this and Bayer Vegetable Garden spray so I opted for the smaller non-behemoth company...same active ingredients. I'll be spot spraying with it before pulling the plants.

ETA: Oh, and the Maggie's Farm spray was about a buck cheaper than Bayer's.

Interesting
I wonder if the Skeeter shield works
https://maggiesfarmproducts.co...

And, yes these cute suckers really are suckers hahaha

sallyg said: Ha, Poison...

Now, I wonder, if I had sprayed with Captain Jacks a few times, might I get ahead of the stink bugs? But the tomatoes themselves were so small and so few, I just gave up. It wasn't the year for me to focus on the garden. It's ok. There's always next crop or next year.

I'm not sure that would have helped, Sally. I had some CJ Deadbug Brew, but it doesn't list stink bugs as being an insect that it controls, which makes sense. The active ingredient in CJ's is spinosad which is an ingested by chewing/gnawing insects. Stink bugs pierce and suck the juices from the plant which would effectively avoid the thin layer of spinosad on the fruit. From what I can tell, a contact killer of some type is required to kill stink bugs.

I'd been using some insecticidal soap but I think that resulted in just having clean stink bugs. The soap is supposed to kill the young ones, though. Most places say soap won't kill the adults but I watched a Youtube yesterday where a guy made the video to directly refute the claim that soap won't kill the adults. It appeared to work. BUT...I was a bit skeptical of his results. He would spray one and within 30 seconds (and he remarked about the short time period) the stink bug would be dead...I've never seen that result when I sprayed with the Safers Soap. The ones I sprayed with soap would crawl around or fly off somewhere...a few (usually the green ones) would drop to the ground beneath the plants, but it was hot and I didn't hang around a long time to see what happened...at the time I *thought* the soap would kill them. Interestingly, when I would come back later I never found a dead stink bug at the base of the plants. The soap also doesn't list stink bugs as being killed by it, the closest-looking insect to a stink bug that is listed, I think, is a harlequin bug.

The 0.01% pyrethrins-based sprays were the least toxic insecticide that lists stink bugs that I could find.

Good info, Ed!

sallyg said: Interesting
I wonder if the Skeeter shield works
https://maggiesfarmproducts.co...

In a small area, maybe yes...in a larger, open garden...I dunno. I'm interested, though, just for the mosquito repelling feature...if it works. I'd looked at the "Thermacell" atomizers but after going through what we've gone through the last couple of years I decided that was bad, BAD. We don't even burn candles in the house anymore. Maggie's Farm skeeter repellent is not an atomizer and appears to be essential oils...which might be worth looking at some more. For some reason I go sit at the garden late in the evenings and maybe a few mosquitoes bother me....if Gena joins me the mosquitoes bring in an army Osprey to haul her off with!!!

I have my can of Picardin OFF spray. I just have to USE it.

My wife has picardin spray, too. It doesn't seem to work as well for her (though it did in Africa!)...maybe it's our redneck skeeters down here? And of course she doesn't always use it, either.

Well, I went around the scraggly tomato plants "spritzing" the suckers with a little of Maggies pyrethrin spray yesterday morning. I noted that, unlike the insecticidal soap, the pyrethrin spray had faster and notable effect on the suckers. The ones hit with a solid blast of spray tended to move away a short distance (less than a foot) and start "scratching" with their hind legs. Soon they were doing impressions of dingleberries, hanging by a leg or two and "blowing in the wind". Others only got a slight spritzing as they flew quickly when the spray hit them...they flew away, but I feel that the amount of spray that got on them sealed their doom.

I returned to the plants late yesterday evening and found a couple of solo suckers and a pair of very-much-in-love LFB suckers...they all received a loving spritz. It will be interesting to see how many are present this morning on the plants.