Funny you say been oil cause I just stayed it yesterday.
The green one is a type of leaf hopper. Some are quite beautiful but all are damaging to plants and some of them are vectors of disease. Kill them. The brown one is as you thought, a flea beetle. They don't do as much harm as the leaf hopper but if they are allowed to reproduce the damage can be severe. Neem will work on both of them but a spinosad based insecticide is more effective
I appreciate the help. Now that you say the leafhoppers can bring disease, would you mind looking at some photos of the tomato plant I found the bugger on?
No, that looks more like aphid damage. Leaf hoppers tend to move about a lot and with that many holes you would see them by the hundreds. Also leaf hoppers spread virus and a virus usually shows as deformed not damaged leaves. Go out and shake your plants. They will fly up and you can see how many there are. There are probably not very many but don't let them multiply
Sadly, those aren't actual holes. They're black spots. Well, some parts have become holes. Is that what aphid damage looks like? Because I thought it was a fungus from all the rain we've had. But then I saw the insects and thought "hang on, what if I pruned away the affected foliage and it was just bugs". I was out there messing with the plant for a good while and only saw 2 leafhoppers and 2 flea beetles. I only saw one aphid and I almost missed it.
Yep, that's what aphid damage looks like but so does a fungus. Aphid damage weakens or injures the leaf where it chewed on it and it is a great spot for a fungus to take hold. Are these damaged leaves close to the bottom of the plant or at the top or just all over it?
Kind of all over it. I cut back all the damage. Not too much at the very top but that's mostly new growth. I wonder if it started as aphid damage and when we had a week worth of rain a fungus took hold...
Yep, that is more than likely what happened. Here in Texas we have been having off and on heavy rains for weeks now and on my tomatoes the lower limbs and only the lower limbs show the same thing, but that is from the heavy rains splashing dirt on the leaves and I have a lot of mulch under my plant too. If the sun ever comes out I expect them to turn yellow and when that happens I will remove ALL affected limbs. We can't really stop this from happening but we can manage it until our harvest is in. Yesterday it rained a little over 12 inches and it is pouring down again as I type. I might not have to worry about pruning the limbs as the entire garden might wash away
Yeah, we got a lot of rain. A week worth. Then a week of sun minus the freak rain storm and hail we had a week ago. Now more rain yesterday and expecting so much more today. We were even in a flash flood warning yesterday. Mother nature is being none too kind with the weather.
You might have seen on the national news yesterday about a flash flood hitting Bandera Tx. A wall of water about 20 feet high came down the Medina river and swept all kinds of things away. It rained almost 13 inches in 4 hours. I live 17 miles from Bandera and I got a bit over 12 inches in 6 hours. Rain started here about 2 hours ago and looking out across a running swamp at my rain gauge it shows a tad over 3 inches with more on the way
We don't have cable so I hadn't heard of that. That's absolutely insane. It makes me wonder how the weather in my area of Texas, copperas cove, is. We have a house rented out there while we are stationed in North Carolina. Thankfully the house is atop a hill.
Copperas Cove is fairly close to Ft Worth and they have also been getting hit hard. Especially Dallas. There have also been a few tornados around there as well. Huge hail has been widespread, in many places as big a softballs or grapefruit.
I have a cousin who lives on Lake Whitney. The lake has been over flood stage for about a month. He says there is about 4 feet of water going over the emergency spillway