Hi, branmuffin. Sorry you are having problems.

The green ones are leafhoppers. The brown ones might be a larval form of the leafhoppers or something else. Could you provide a better view of the brown ones?

(Just in case you go looking on the Internet for more info, don't be surprised to see that there are other types of leafhoppers that look very different.)

That's really all I can tell you.

Thank you for your reply. I thought also that they are some kind of a grasshopper, but they don't seem to hop. They crawl around mostly up and down the vines.

The brown ones congregate around the main stem of the tomato plant neat the fruit where they bore holes in the fruit.

I've seen leaf hoppers before but never like these. The question now is whether or not to replace the soil in the Oak Barrel that I have the tomato planted in. I've already removed the plant since it's mainly dead.

Hello again, branmuffin. I'm afraid the first post is an Oops; at best the thing is related to leafhoppers and often confused with them.

I was looking for life cycle info, but failed to find that particular bug on Google Images, which caused me to wonder if whoever told me it was a leafhopper years ago actually gave the correct name (most likely my parents or grandparents, as these seem to be California bugs and I grew up in California). So I looked further, and it is actually a keeled treehopper [sometimes Keelback, sometimes Tree Hopper, etc.].

In no particular order:

http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/hemipt/KeeledTreehopper.htm

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2009/12/27/keeled-treehoppers/

http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/green-insect-identification.html (scroll down; comments are good)

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tompests/msg0303171821790.html

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=60935

http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/~dietrich/treehFAQ.html

Yup they look like them alright. Uuuuugly! ...and they killed my tomato plant. I now wonder if they didn't come from the Miracle Garden Soil that I purchased.

I'm beginning to wonder about the Miracle Grow soil as this is the 2nd one (bag) that I've had insect problems with.

You'd think that if you paid a higher price for good soil that you would get GOOD and NOT contaminated soil.

I mixed 1 teaspoon of Neem Oil and 1 teaspoon of Dawn Liquid Soap to one gallon of water and used that to spray the plant and it seems to kill them. But it was too late to save the plant. OH WELL ... time to replant.

The good thing here in Hawaii is that you can plant veggies almost all year round and they will grow. The bad thing is a lot of things have to be shipped from the mainland (continental U.S.) and shipping more often than not is prohibitive .. costs an arm and a leg.

Such is the price of living in Paradise as they say. LOL!

Mahalo Nui Loa (Thank you very Much) for all the work and research that you've done to find the right insect. Funny thing is I also grew up almost all my life in California (Alameda) area and I've never ran into these.

Aloha
K-Guy (I'm thinking of changing my name to Kauaiguy, which I use in most of my internet sites, but seems to be a lot more hassle than it's worth) LOL!

This post was edited by branmuffin on Fri, Jan 25, 13 at 18:41