What is destroying my tomato plants?

PLEASE HELP! Something is shredding my tomato plants from the bottom up.

I have tomatoes in a large box on my third floor deck. They were coming along nicely and I have been waiting for my first tomatoes to ripen. However, they were a little close together - too many of them - in the one box and the other day I transplanted a few of the ones that seemed to be getting strangled to other containers. I came out the next day and noticed the ones remaining in the center were down to the root with the upper half broken off. I thought perhaps I had done it accidentally being careless in my cutting, but I noticed a bunch of shredded plant all over the deck and so decided to keep a close eye.

This morning I came out and the plants remaining, and in particular the two with the most tomatoes on them, were broken off at the base and shredded plant was everywhere. They are not eating the tomatoes, just shredding the plant at the bottom until it breaks.

Could this be rats? It happens overnight. Any ideas?

I realize this may be hard to picture and as I didn't have time to photograph it this morning, I have used my considerable artistic talent (ha!!!!) to try to represent what it looks like by using a photo of much nicer and riper tomatoes in container and paint.

Just trying to represent the place where the shredding happened. The little bits on the ground are pieces of shredded stalk. The tops as you can see, and the fruit, are untouched and still tied to their stakes. Now, remember this is happening to container plants up on a third floor deck with no stairs (but tree branches do overhang) and only happening at night.

Okay. Clearly my artwork wasn't doing the trick, so I took a photo today. They are all gone now. I also rememberd the vines that had taken over the back yard were all cut down and removed this weekend before this happened, so wondering if something had been living off of them and is now looking for some other food source?

I truly am worried about this as I don't know really what did this and what is next!!

That is really strange! The thing is though is that the leaves and stems of tomato are poisionous! so it seems what ever is doing this would be sick and not able to come back the next day. dust some flower on the deck and look for footprints tomorrow.

X

This message was edited Sep 15, 2006 11:31 PM

Thank you for that idea! That seems better than drinking coffee and staking out my deck with a baseball bat. :-))

So far they've been back at least three or four nights. Crazy isn't it? Given what you're saying, I am wondering if they are eating the stalk at all...there's so much of it shredded all over the deck. So what could they be after, I wonder??

Heading for the flour now.....genius idea.

My tomatoes & peppers were attacked.
My "visitor" is either a raccoon or an oppussum.

Nancy

I think I am looking at roof rats. The flour idea was great and I have found all kinds of activity on my deck at night. But surely seems to be rats around the plant. Had a passing racoon it seems as well but didn't hang out at the plant.....seemed like he visited the hummingbird feeder given the flour tracked up on the rail.

Still mystified as to why they shredded the stalk but left the fruit!

Thanks X for the idea!!

Your welcome! At least you know now that you have more neighbors visiting than you realized. The next plan of action might be a rat trap. Bait it with p-nut butter.

X