Realizing all tomato fruits with small holes when harvesting is fast approaching can be discouraging. Find out which pests are responsible for eating holes in your tomatoes, including leaves and stems. In most cases, plant diseases are not considered direct causes of the problem.
1. Hornworms – Tomato Leaves with Holes
One of the major pests that eat holes in tomatoes is hornworms.
Identification
Tomato hornworms are larger caterpillars with horn-like structures at the tail end. They do not only make holes in the leaves but defoliate your garden tomatoes from the top.
These are other useful identification tips:
- Presence of smoother, oval, light green tiny eggs on leaves
- Larvae worms are hairless
- Horn-like structures at the back ends
- White stripes (v-shape or linear) with tiny dark dots along them
- Toward the end of the larvae stage, they hide in soil with some protection around them in the winter

These are signs of hornworms in terms of tomato plant damage.
- Defoliated tomato plants and holes in leaves of other near plant hosts (eggplant, jimson, nightshade, etc.)
- Presence of dark green to black feces droppings under defoliated/leaves with large holes
Adults are five-spotted “hawk” moths but don’t pose any damage risks.
Steps to Control Hornworms
Here is how to control and prevent hornworms:
- Identify them early, catch or handpick them and drown them or just wholly kill them
- Carry out thorough tillage after harvesting or before spring to reduce the pupae in the soil
- Encourage beneficial predators such as Braconid wasps or tachid fly parasite
- Apply a control insecticide (e.g. Bacillus Thuringiensis or Monterey Garden Spray) when the larvae have started causing damage

It is difficult to get rid of these pests. First, hornworm caterpillars (larvae) are green colored enabling them to blend in (camouflage) while causing leaf damage. Second, these caterpillars drop to stay in the soil as they prepare (pupate) for the adult stage later in spring.
2. Flea Beetles (E. fuscula)
The flea beetles (E. fuscula) are another possible cause of holes in tomato seedlings. They may also feed on tomato fruits.
How to Spot Flea Beetles
Here are physical characteristics to help identify flea beetles:

- The backs are striped bluish, brown, bronze or metallic gray
- They have well-developed hind legs for jumping as fleas do
- Flea beetles can overwinter in the soil and stay on dried leaves and
- Irregularly shaped (sieve-like) holes and feeding patterns on tomato seedling leaves
Control and Preventive Measures
How to control flea beetles, E. fuscula, on tomatoes in your garden? Follow these simple guide tips.
- Prepare and apply dish soap water solution immediately after you spot them in your garden
- Make use of diatomaceous earth or baking soda on bushes and landscape features such as wooden structures in the garden
- Spray neem oil once or twice a week
- Hang some DIY traps around the edges of the garden veggie section
Unfortunately, preventing these leaf beetle pests is quite difficult. Here are the reasons why:
- They lay eggs on the roots and stems of host plants
- Previous harvest plant residues provide hiding places to overwinter
- Flea beetles can also stay in the soil after harvesting or removing plant hosts
3. Slugs and Snails
Slugs and snails pose leaf damage risks for many vegetables. Slugs are easy to identify but tricky to locate because they migrate to cool and wet spots.
- Dry, shiny mucous paths on leaves, wet soil, plant residue, stems or leaves
- Irregularly dug-out holes on leaves
- Dark to black feces on leaf petioles, stems and leaves
- Medium-high level plant defoliation

They cause rugged small to large holes on leaves. With infestation, they chew more. As a result, you can expect some degree of defoliation. Sometimes slugs feed on tomato fruits but this is rare.
Preventive Steps
Here is how to prevent snails and slugs from invading and infesting your garden veggie:
- Stake or support your transplanted tomato seedlings
- Use copper barriers or dry sawdust to repel them from invading the plant garden
- Purchase molluscicide pellet baits containing iron phosphate formulations. Follow the steps and instructions on the label before setting them up
- For severe cases of slug, infestation avoid the application of loose garden mulch
4. Tomato Fruitworms
Tomato fruit worms make holes in fruits, stems or leaves during the larvae stage. Here is how to tell this is a tomato fruitworm, where they live, how to control and methods to get rid of them.
Identifying Fruitworms
STEP 1: Search for evidence of eggs laid by adult females. Here are steps how to identify them:
- Eggs are creamy-white
- They are tiny and look spherical
- From one end tip to the other are rough linear marks that appear as slight ridges and little grooves
- Each egg is laid and attached singly to a tomato leaf
- Look for these eggs on both the upper and underside of tomato leaves

Where possible, use a hand lens to better locate and identify them.
Step 2: Be on the lookout for the larvae, 3 to 4 days after the eggs have hatched.
- As they await fruit onset, they start by feeding on young leaves
- Feeding on leaf sap means they leave small holes
- The young larvae bore holes at the ends of the stem which attach to fruits
- Then they become caterpillars
- Caterpillars are creamy white but black-headed with black hairs
- After each fruit with holes becomes watery, with feces they move to fresh ones making new holes
Some larvae are large while others are small. Large ones are yellow-green, dark or black with clear white lines along their bodies. As they get older, the hairs become shorter and turn spine-like.

Whether small or large, older caterpillars have dark spots at the base of hairs. Notably, the larvae will spend the whole of their development in the fruit.
How to Get Rid of Tomato Fruitworms
Gardeners can safely use Bacillus thuringiensis (Berl.) or baculovirus as a treatment option. Farmers should aim at spraying when newly hatched larvae have just emerged.
Sometimes pesticides may become ineffective. Why? One is possibly due to inaccurate spray timing on newly hatched larvae. Two, tomato fruit worms have “high reproductive potential and a propensity to develop resistance to insecticides.”[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
Control and Prevention
Control Biologically: This approach works by introducing a parasite that feeds the fruit worm’s eggs and larvae.
A more beneficial and effective parasite is the Trichogramma species of small wasps. They feed on the eggs. Typically, they are almost invisible making them an ideal biological control.
Other biological controls include the big-eyed and minute pirate bugs. They predate and eat the larvae (caterpillars).
Traps with Hormones: After comprehensive monitoring, farmers on a budget can purchase traps to lure adult moths. They can use these traps to minimize/prevent the chances of them laying eggs.
Plant Predator Attraction Plants: To encourage the multiplication of these parasites, grow plants to attract them. Include herbs or plants such as yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, zinnias, fennel and dill.
These approaches are appropriate and more practical in production fields. Moreover, these kinds of methods have been effective when conditions favor the survival of the mentioned predators/parasites.
Organic Products: If the infestation and damage extent is still low, apply neem oil, insecticide Sevin, or concentrate dish soap solution.
Some other ways of controlling tomato fruitworms are cumbersome. This involves handpicking and then killing them.
5. Cutworms
Unlike fruitworms, cutworms hide in soil (but near the surface) during the day. They emerge from the soil and start causing leaf damage at night.
Here is how to identify them.
- They are commonly brown to gray body-color
- Cutworms don’t have the hairs
- They like curling around the stem and can pretend to be dead
For proper identification, you need to scout your tomato seedlings in the morning. You should find the stems are cut at the base near the soil surface.
Alternatively, scoop top-most soil around the tomato plants. Carefully, look for a curled either brown or gray creature, about 2 inches long.
6. More Causes of Holes in Tomato Plants
Besides tomato fruit worms, here are the pests with the potential to bore holes in the leaves of your tomato plants.
a) Fruit flies (Bactrocera dorsalis) cause small holes in fruits and leaves of vegetables.

b) Cabbage loppers/lopper caterpillars: may be consfused with fruitworms though the eggs laid by female loppers moths have much fine linear marks.
c) Cabbage worms
d) Pinworms
Summary – Eat or Not Eat
Is it healthy to eat tomatoes with holes? When it comes to safety practices, eating tomatoes with holes is regarded as being unhealthy.
For instance, it is dangerous to eat them long after you have applied any pesticide or treatment product. In the long run, pesticide residue can be harmful to human health if ingested accidentally.
Sources and Resources
- Flea Beetles. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/animal/flea-beetle. Accessed online 14 October 2021
- Figueiredo E, Gonçalves C, Duarte S, Godinho MC, Mexia A, Torres L. Risk Assessment for Tomato Fruitworm in Processing Tomato Crop-Egg Location and Sequential Sampling. Insects. 2020 Dec 28;12(1):13. doi: 10.3390/insects12010013. PMID: 33379226; PMCID: PMC7824523. Accessed online 14 October 2021
- Precautions for using pesticides. UCIPM. Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/GENERAL/precautions.html. Accessed online 14 October 2021
- Controlling Garden Snails and Slugs – May 9, 2001. Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yavapai County. https://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/archive/snailsandslugs.html. Accessed online 14 October 2021
- Worms on Tomatoes. Alabama A & M & Auburn Universities. https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/crop-production/worms-on-tomatoes/. Accessed online 18 October 2021
- Helicoverpa zea. ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/helicoverpa-zea. Accessed online 30 Jan 2023
- Fruit Flies. Agriculture Food and Environment. http://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef621. Accessed online 30 Jan 2023
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