A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Whats eating the peels off my lemons?

The subject line says it all. Every week I see 4 or 5 lemons under the tree with no peels on them.
No Peels anywhere! I have had this lemon tree for 10 years and I have never seen this.

Yesterday I also found a half eatin green tomato.
Here I saw what looked like bite marks on the edge of it, The Lemons are under the tree but the Tomato was about 10 feet from the plant.

What do you think it is?

If anyone has any ideas please reply or email me.
at Cruzer@pacbell.net

Thanks

Cruzer,
Welcome to The Garden Helper's Forum!!!!
We are very glad you found us!!!

I am not too sure which bite marks they could be??

A picture would be a GREAT HELP!!
If no picture a little more discribing on the bite mark!! Small, large, deep, several or just one?????

Papito usually is our citris guy, he may know,
he's from your state too, hopefully he'll be coming thru shortly, in the meantime, read some good reading info here on the garden helper!!!
But there is several gardener's that may also help you along your path as well!!!

Weezie

Cruzer.....my parents had a couple lemon trees for about 35 years and I have had mine for 2 and half years and yet to have that problem....I have seen snails and slugs on mine but they just crawl right over the surface.

A tomato worm will eat your tomatoes....have you seen any? Their will be brown droppings on the ground where they have been going at it.....as well as eaten leaves....and their droppings have a very distinquishing smell....I can just walk by a bush and smell them. Would a tomato worm eat a lemon peel???? Never heard of it before.

At least in Fallbrook I am running into more grasshoppers this year....not only the brown ones but those little green guys. Would they eat lemon peels???

Where is Papito....he is our citrus guy!!!
Ohhhhhhh Papito where arrrrrrre youuuuuu!!! Any clues?

Box turtles? I know they eat tomatos. I'm not sure about the lemon peel thing. Just a guess.

These links might help identify the cause of the problem:

Snail Damage to Citrus

more info on

Snails & Slugs

Thanks for the info,

I checked the snail and slug links and its not that. As for what it looks like well picture a lemon after you peel it. The lemon is sitting in the shade under the tree still intact the whole peel is missing.

What ever it is it got another tomato yesterday. This one was ripe. Again the tomoto was about 10 feet from the plant, A afternoon shady spot in the yard. The bite marks look like the jaws are about 1/2 inch wide. A friend sugguested a racoon may be the culprit. I havent seen any droppings.
What do you think?

Thanks

Cruzer...you sure got me stumped! I don't know what kind of animal could stand the sour~ness of a lemon.

Are all the lemons that "it" gets laying on the ground when eaten...or are they eaten in the tree and then fall?

You sure you don't have tomato worms....they will gobble half a green tomato overnight as well as leaves.

Coons would have a bigger bite size than 1/2", and I haven't seen tomato worms eat red tomatoes.
How about birds going after the tomato????

Grasshoppers, tomato worms, coons, skunks, squirrels, birds, snails, slugs??????
Anybody else have a wild stab....remember Cruzer lives in California!

Puzzled Catlover

tree rats (and possums) love citrus fruit almost as much as we do. But apparently they don't like the tart flesh of the fruit--just the sweet peel.

Could this be it?

Karen

Oh yeah I forgot about those tree rats and possums Karen....those tree rats used to go after our avocadoes!!! If you have palm trees anywhere around you....you will have a nest of them in the tree and need to remove the old frones(sp?). Or if you have an old wood pile....they bury under and nest. We had both problems to deal with.

We used to have a sliding glass door and watch the possums cross our deck each evening with babies attached to them....memories.