[ricky]

Hi my friends as you know I grow a huge amount of tomatoes, it's a hobby I give them away to friends ,as past 3 years I've been using the free compost from the council yard just to dig into my soil and barrels now the problem I have microscopic white things on the stem of my tomatoes moving around and it's draining the life out of my plants some have died already  , I'm just after spraying with bug off so I will see how that does ,first time in 40 years of growing I've ever had aphids on my tomatoes plenty of blight through the years but no aphids so do I blame the compost or just the season or bad luck I have roughly 600 plants ( a tad mad but it's an interest) very cold over here in co Antrim I had to cover tomatoes bedding plants and peppers with paper Friday nite a tight frost ,sorry I haven't got a proper phone I'm very much in the cave with my nokia or I could have sent you pictures of these aphids. Thanks guy's

[Goosegirl]

I've had whitefly on a couple of indoor plants and sprayed them. I haven't noticed any in my g-house but will have a careful look. Thanks for the warning.

[Dr_Pepper]

Interesting -  "microscopic white things on the stem of my tomatoes moving around"
Are you sure they are Aphids? The aphids on tomatoes are pretty large, not so mobile, and don't ususally kill the plants.
If they are really small and moving around, are they a bit yellow, rather than white? Could be spider mite
The only truly microscopic mite in tomatoes is Tomato Russet Mite - but this is really hard to see without a good hand lens.
I attached pictures of spider mite (plus eggs), russet mite and an aphid from a tomato for reference.

[ricky]

Dr pepper thanks for reply these parasites are smaller than grains of sand I've tried " bug clear"  whether it only kills some I come back in an hour and their on the tomatoes again millions of them , it's the council free compost that's to blame out of the 3 polytunnels the one that's infected had the compost put in last autumn dry conditions ,the other 2 tunnels only got compost 2 months ago after it spent all winter out in the elements this stuff is fine , but I still have these vermin ruining one tunnel I'm going to try different insecticides  but I'm running out of ideas , the last resort will be clear the tunnel and spray jeyes fluid it kills everything and sterilizes the soil I don't really want to but extreme measures will be  required  very soon.