Ready to grow your own hairy tomatoes from seed? Start here.

Tomato plant hairs are actually trichomes.

Your tomato plants are covered in trichomes. Some are long and look like white fuzz on your tomato stem. In the photo below, you can see the glossy strands of the long trichomes poking out all around the stem.  But there are also super tiny ones that look more like little bubbles covering the surface of the tomato plant. Those bubbles are actually perched right on top of super tiny trichomes.

Why do tomatoes have trichomes?

Tomatoes have trichomes to help protect them from pests and disease. The tiny trichomes on tomato plants are like glands that secrete essential oils which give tomato plants their wonderful scent. It is precisely that scent that aims to repel some pests. The tomato plant can react to times of stress by altering the compounds within its trichomes to attempt to deter critters that may want to chomp on it. It is presumed that the pests find the taste, scent, or texture of the essential oils unappealing. If you’ve grown tomatoes before, you know this is not a fail-proof method by any means. But who knows how many more pests would be present without the distasteful oils.

The leaves and fruit of tomato plants are also covered in trichomes. As with the stem, there are trichomes on tomato fruit and leaves that keep them coated with essential oils. Trichomes and their oils form a barrier to prevent bacterial, fungal, and viral infection in addition to trapping water and reducing evaporation.

That’s pretty cool, huh?

Why do tomato plant trichomes matter to gardeners?

It is important to understand the role of the trichomes so that you can be cautious not to damage this protective layer. When pruning your tomatoes, be careful not to squeeze or scrape your plants. Your tomato plant can repair itself, but the wound is an invitation for infection to enter. The damaged area is without the protection of trichomes until the plant can form a scar over the wound.

You may also notice that oils will also begin to accumulate on your hands and fingers during pruning. It starts out as yellow, and as it becomes caked on your skin, it turns black.

Trichomes are to blame for tomato fingers.

If you’ve worked with your tomatoes, you know what I’m talking about! A dirty black film builds up on our hands when you’ve been handling your tomato plants. It happens when you plant, prune, tie up, or harvest. The more time you spend with your tomatoes, the more it gets caked on your fingertips. Some people call it tomato tar.

I call it Tomato Fingers!

These fingers are somewhere in between the green and black stage. Probably with some red clay mixed in. But you get the idea.

It is the build-up of the compounds on the trichomes that make that nasty film.

Remember that the trichomes secrete essential oils? Those oils are what become stuck to your finger and nails. They’re very sticky, and they don’t wipe off easily.

If you are familiar with this stuff, you also know that hand soap seems to just slide around on top of it. That is because the oils are not water-soluble. And don’t try to wipe it off with your hand towels because it will stain them!

I use rubbing alcohol or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer and paper towels to scrub off as much as I can. With the crust wiped off, you can more easily get your hands clean. The alcohol dissolves the oils and makes it easier to wash your hands clean with soap and water.

Trichomes are a tomato’s best self-defense

Isn’t that cool that tomatoes can defend themselves with hair?! I am in awe of all the beautiful ways mother nature solves problems. The tomatoes needed a way to defend themselves. They don’t have arms or legs or brains, but they have hair. And they made that work. That’s neat.

If you like finding out cool things like this, please grow a garden. There’s lots of cool stuff to be found out there!

Need some help getting started? Check out these posts

Beginner Gardening Tips

Seed Starting For Beginners

Five Tomatoes You Should Grow

More Info

Visit these additional sites for some seriously awesome tomato hair pics and more info about trichomes.

What type of trichome is on tomato plants?

There are two types of trichomes – glandular and non-glandular. Tomatoes have both glandular and non-glandular types of trichomes. Wondering what trichomes look like? Here’s a microscopic view of tomato trichomes and how they interact with a thrip.

Here’s some more nerdy stuff if you like to know the technical details.

Biomechanics of trichome defense

The development of type VI glandular trichomes in the cultivated tomato

Overview of secretory and glandular trichomes.

The post What You Need To Know About The Hair On Your Tomato Plant appeared first on You Should Grow.

I am fascinated by the tomato bugs in our garden. They make me mad sometimes, but they are interesting.

Beetles and Larvae

Here are some Colorado potato beetle larvae on some wild nightshade. We are terrible at keeping up with the weeds in our garden. Keeping weeds down is vital to decreasing pest problems in your garden, so I’ve vowed to be better at this!

The wild nightshades do function as a catch crop for Colorado potato beetles which can cause serious damage in a garden. A catch crop means that the beetles will preferentially munch on these weeds so that there are a few less eating on our food crops. But it also means they’re breeding and multiplying in our garden area.

Adult beetles like the Colorado potato beetle and cucumber beetle can be hard to control with organic pesticides. Applying insecticidal soaps and neem oil to the larvae and nymphs of these bugs is much more effective.

The nasty red larvae grow into little yellow and black striped beetles. As we walk through the garden we often step and smash the nightshade plants and beetles.

All life stages of the Colorado potato beetle will eat away at leaves of tomatoes and eggplant as well as potatoes. So it is best to be able to recognize the larvae and adults so you can get rid of them when they are seen.

Tomato Worms

Here is another common garden pest: the tomato hornworm. These guys will eat your plants clean down to little stems. They can decimate an entire crop if not controlled.

They get pretty huge and one worm can eat an entire tomato plant.  Because they are so big they can be pretty gross when squished. But it’s gotta be done. That’s what happened to this one. Sorry, big guy!

This guy was just chillin’ upside down when I found him. They try to look really scary with their horn pointed up like that, but they are harmless to people.

Their little feet are really grippy, though, and I do not like for them to grab on to me. It doesn’t hurt it just gives me the heeby-jeebies.

Hornworms become large brown moths that lay their eggs on the bottom side of tomato leaves in spring and summer. These guys will complete two life cycles over the growing season.

So keep an eye out for them as long as you have tomatoes growing. The tiny caterpillars also have a tiny little horn tail so they are easy to identify.

There is also a tomato fruit worm we often find munching the green tomatoes in our garden. That is what we call it because it will burrow into the green tomatoes and feast and get fat in there. I mean that is just rude.

So I don’t mind plucking these guys and squishing them.

These guys are just the worst because they really prefer the green tomatoes, but they will also eat the leaves and stems.

You most often find them inside a green tomato growing big and fat!

Tomato fruit worms become brown moths, and they can complete up to four generations during the growing season. They will also infest corn crops so planting tomatoes and corn near each other can lead to major fruit worm attacks.

This picture is just so sad and gross. There is a dried up little tomato on which you can still see where the fruit worm ate it and pooped all over it.

Just look at all that poop on the other tomato, too. And that nasty worm is inside just munching away. Ewww. These worms can cause a lot of damage to our crop so we walk and pluck these often, too.

Dealing with bugs

We were already infested by the time I took these pictures. If you have a similar problem with tomato bugs in your garden, pluck them and squish them when you see them. In a smaller garden, this may be enough to control pests.

A great organic option is to get some Bt to apply. Bt is a bacteria that infects and kills the caterpillars when they eat it. It makes an effective organic pesticide, and it would still be appropriate to apply at this stage.

Pyganic, an organic pyrethrin, and spinosad sprays are a bit more aggressive way to deal with these bugs. The thing about pesticide sprays is that you risk killing good bugs.

To avoid killing pollinators, try to spray in the evening when they are less active.

All three of these pests will burrow into the soil to pupate before they emerge as adults. When you pull up your plants, make sure to check the soil and smash any pupae you find. Solarizing your soil will also help.

But the fact of the matter is that we never try to eliminate all the pests in the garden. We always expect some losses to pests and disease.

Who would want all the bugs gone anyway? What would I take pictures of? Tomato hair? Ha! Yes!

Plus there are some bugs we want to keep around.

Spiders

This guy is a good friend in the garden. This little green spider with its hairy legs is a predator for many garden moths and their larvae.

They can be a little aggressive about protecting their egg sacs, but they are not dangerous. I got pretty darn close to this one to get its picture with my phone.

Here’s another picture of the Green Lynx Spider. So cool, aren’t they?

That was all I saw today. You never know what you might find in the garden.

What kinds of bugs do you have in your garden?

Might as well check ’em all out because, love ’em or hate ’em, they’re there.

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