Downsized the tomatoes this year and put in more peppers
But I got my first two fruits of the year on the vine this past week or so

Nice! Plant looks great. What variety did you plant?

Tried a new one this year. Called and Early girl Plants are hearty as could be very solid main stems

Although I found a critter today so I’m gonna have to do something
Had a leaf looking sick so I took a closer look and found this

This thing has blown up with all the rain. Almost doubled in size

Excuse the grass. Haven’t been able to get the mower out in two weeks cause Of the monsoon

That's looking pretty good. That bug has me stumped. Here are tools in my tool box and I would start getting them out now. Specially the fungicide app.

Horticultural oil. I prefer this over Neem. Decent pesticide control and has anti fungal properties. This is an application I would do now in the morning or evening. Once we he steady temps of 85 degrees put this back in the tool box for next year. Same with Neem

Pyganic 1.4. - Good pyrethrin based insecticide approved for gardens.

Serenade - good fungicide

Daconil - good fungicide

Spinosad/Bt. - Of the two I'd go Spinosad. Longer leaf residual and better overall control.

Cheap gallon pump up sprayer works great. Follow label rates. Make sure you spray under the leaves too. This time of year I'd be spraying something weekly/biweekly in rotation if you have the time.

Not sure what it is. Almost looked like an aphid on steroids. Only found a single one and checked it over for 30 minutes since it’s been a couple of days for me to get to the plants

Y’all make sure to maintain water next several weeks. Natural rain is awesome for the tomatoes but I always delt with end rot when we had this much of it.

Thank you for saying this. It's always, throw bone meal on it, crush up some egg shells and put them on it and so on. Calcium decency. Which it is, but proper soil moisture and watering will solve 95% of your BER issues on tomatoes.

Derek, I need some help as several of my tomatoes have wilted from the excess rain fall. We got 13.44" May and my ground is completely saturated. What will help? Thanks LarryB

Your soil is waterlogged and starving the roots of oxygen. I would start hammering down with aerating the soil. Pitch fork, steel rod, anything similar. Get lots of holes in the ground to try and pump in some oxygen. Top dress the area after aerating with dry compost, peat moss, sand, any of those will be fine. Do anything you can to get the upcoming rains excess water out of there. Dig some ditches, cover the area in plastic whatever it takes to get the water to run off. Lastly you're going to have a big loss of nutrients that have washed away and you're going to have some root loss. I would give it about a week and see if these rain chances taper off, but you need to fertilize but you don't want to add excess moisture to the soil. Get a cheap 13-13-13 granular to spread out and lightly rake into the soil. You need to push some nitrogen to speed up new root development. The fastest way to do that is foliar nitrogen. Get a jug of DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) its nothing but Urea(Nitrogen) and water 15-0-0. Get a 1 gallon pump sprayer. Add 10oz of Def and fill the rest with water. Mist your plants down. That ratio is enough to cover about 1000sq feet so a light coating and you're good. 2-3 applications of that ever other week should be good enough and the granular will take it from there.

Mortgage lifter?

Y’all can also pull them a little early and let them ripen on the counter.

SO far my plants are looking good. Have pretty much outgrown the cage that I have had around them. Had to come in and support a couple of long main branches with loose zip ties. One good part about them being in a raised bed (BIG mineral tub) Probably have 20 fruits so far on them and lots of other buds. Peppers are really taking off, and with the time I topped them, I really like the way the plants have filled in. Not too tall but very dense and thick.

Nice! My tomato plants are loaded. It's a hot mess right now. Need to do some trimming and more support.