Imagine seeing an entire plant with infested leaves like this. Wouldn't you get rid of it, too?

When you can’t beat ‘em, get rid of what’s attracting ‘em. That’s the conclusion I came to where my tomato plants were concerned. The whitefly infestation was too much for me, and rather than continue to give the pests a place to live, I decided to remove the attraction for them.

The “wild” vine went first. It’s true about maintaining a central, strong vine – in my compare and contrast method, I found that the vine growing along the single stake was more hardy that the one I allowed to branch repeatedly. I had pruned both plants radically to remove the infested leaves. When that was done, the branched vine was so, so bare and was probably so stressed that it didn’t have the strength to continue growing. The single vine did. It’s still attracting whiteflies, though, and I’m waiting for the current crop of tomatoes to ripen before removing the plant. It was nice to experience growing them, and I may try again sometime in the future, if I see fewer whiteflies around. So long, tomatoes…

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