What is this insect feasting on my precious tomato?

[Jennifer]

Thank you! I actually looked online at the nearby walmart, kmart, true value, home depot, and lowe's and I couldn't find any that seemed to have it according to their website (I called kmart as they had it on their website but they do not have it in stock). I did find a super close nursery that has Safer Garden Dust with BT made for caterpillars that I am going to buy tomorrow--but it seems as to what I found online you shake the powder on (seems to need to be applied late in the day/shady day as according to online the sun deteriorates the dust). I will check it out more tomorrow, as I want to make sure I apply it right. I will let you know tomorrow afternoon after I purchase it!!

 

[Jennifer]

It's supposed to rain tonight, and there is possibility of rain all weekend.

I picked off four of these guys today off my plant--one was a big one and one small one and two super tiny barely there ones. The latter came later in the day (I went out there frequently to check after this morning) and I noticed that they must be laying their eggs/larvae into my tomatoes in tiny holes and burrowing out of them because these teensy ones were very high up on the tomato plant. So I killed them and went ahead and looked through every grape tomato and tossed the ones that had any imperfections at all just in case there were more babies in there as I cannot put anything on the plant for the next few days.

As an update, I kidnapped the big one in a plastic baggie and looked up all the worms mentioned before again to verify what it was (of out curiosity) and it ended up not matching anything I could find perfectly, as the tiniest of the worms look identical in pattern and texture to the bigger ones (the tops of the worms are smooth with no spots unlike the other worms mentioned). Frustrated that I might have the wrong thing I took it with me to the nursery and no one there knew what it was, but they definitely knew it wasn't anything we thought earlier or a tomato hornworm or fruitworm and I had four different employees looking at it!

So they insisted I use Sevin as it would probably take care of this thing and I bought it but after reading a lot about it I am leery as I wanted to have an organic garden but now these things are making it impossible (worst than the squirrels and birds). The damage that has been done to the stalks of my plants is outrageous--and it may have taken me a while to notice as I recently had to do some renovating of my plant's placement and when moving stems the skin rubbed off onto the metal wires of the cage as I tied it to it. I also noticed that typically I would have ready to pick tomatoes every day or two and I haven't picked a tomato in days and only a couple are barely ripening, so possibly the damage is making my tomato plant focus on repairing itself instead of ripening, argh.

Whenever I get a chance to apply the Sevin spray I will and let everyone know. I am going to try my hardest to not let the chemical touch any of my other plants in the vicinity as the worms have no taste for peppers and herbs.