Member-only story
A novella in 21 chapters
The Plot: Chapter 15
The Wrong Culprit
Jorja
‘Bloody ruined,’ moaned Vince. ‘Again. Looks like I’m just not going to get any this year.’
He stood before his tomato trellis, head bowed over the fruit cupped in his hands.
Jorja didn’t like to see him this despondent.
Neither did she want him spraying broad-spectrum pesticide all over his patch, even if it did say ‘organic’ on the label. As a biochemist, she advocated only controls that were tightly focused; as a permaculturist, she knew a holistic approach was more effective than a blinkered focus on one issue, one solution.
There was also the minor matter that spraying was strictly banned at the Plot.
She could see that the poor man was beside himself and ready for desperate measures.
‘Let’s have a look.’
Gently, she took the big, unripe tomato from his hands and examined it. On one side, there was a gaping hole. Inside, round beetles could be seen, rather like ladybirds but flattish. Chrysomelida family by the look of it: a leaf beetle, but not one she was familiar with.
That wasn’t surprising, as there were thousands of species, exotic and indigenous.
One clambered out of the fruit. She caught it deftly between thumb and forefinger, pinching its shiny back and swollen belly just enough to prevent it from escaping. It wasn’t wise to squash them: some members of the family could release toxins in self-defence.
She looked at its little head, the long antennae waving around. Quite cute, actually. These leaf beetles’ mouthparts were adapted to eating foliage. It seemed unlikely that they could chew through the relatively thick, rubbery skin of an unripe tomato.
Unless the damage were done by the larval stage? But then you’d expect to see them erupting from the skin, if eggs had been laid inside, or shot holes where the grubs had burrowed in, if laid on the surface. There would be larvae feasting on the juicy innards; there would be frass; then fermentation, once bacteria in the excreta and wild yeasts in the environment got to work. There was none of this.
