When the tomato plants we planted started to fruit and the first cherry tomatoes were ready to harvest we thought we have more tomatoes that we could eat. What we didn’t count on was how much the bugs in the garden would exact in return for their land

The very first Roma tomato was ready. The plant was a Roma tomato hybrid from Bunnings growing up the fence on some plastic lattice we had bought.

Keeping watch for Cabbage Moths

Paddy and I were watching the first Roma tomato almost because i wanted to grab it as soon as it was ready. When i finally gave it a good look i realised that three quarters of the tomato had been eaten from the inside.

When i noticed holes on the next roma I cut it open to see a happy little worm inside. We buried the next roma after that for the same reason. The weekly application of Garlic Fire was having little effect in warding off the cabbage moths and it only took one moth to destroy a tomato that has been growing for weeks!.

The solution turned out to be using fruit tree netting to cover the fruit. We bought roll of the stuff from Bunnings for less than $5. We cut out circles of the netting and made a sack from the circles by gathering the cloth up at the edge. Put the whole lot over a newly formed individual tomato or vine and fasten with an elastic band. Don’t tighten the elastic band, it only needs to be strong enough to hold the sack onto the plant. Make sure you have plenty of spare room in the sack for the tomato to grow and its best if the fruit does not really touch the sides of the sack.

In Perth we have really strong sun, like us you may find that the sacks will also protect the tomato from sunburn.

Once the tomatoes were protected from the cabbage moths by the cloth we had no more problems from them and were able to harvest one or two before the next threat came along…