How to Get Rid of Thrips in the Garden!
What Are Thrips?
Adult thrips are really tiny and slender insects and they can cause really serious damage to your garden. And when I say tiny, I mean it… they are only about 1/25th of an inch long. It my area they are dark brown to black in color, but they can even be a yellowish color elsewhere. And luckily they have badly formed wings which makes they horrible flyers.
Thrips can appear as tiny dark slivers on plants which makes them tricky to spot. Sometimes you need to use a magnifying glass.
They feed on plants by puncturing plant parts and sucking the juices out of leaves and stems. They often atack the plant leaves from the undersides, so make sure you look there.
They love to feed on developing flowers and vegetables, causing discoloration and deformities.
What is the Life Cycle of Thrips?
Adult and pupae thrips tend to overwinter in garden soil in colder climates. They can be more of a problem year round here in Southern California. Once Spring hits, females come out and climb up the plants and insert eggs into the tissues of flowers, leaves, or stems.
One really important fact about thrips is they do not need to mate in order to reproduce. Each female can lay up to 80 eggs! These eggs hatch within just days in warm weather or weeks in colder weather.
Once thrips are hatched, they become wingless larvae, or nymphs, and start feeding on the plant’s sap. When they’ve had their fill, they then drop to the soil and turn to pupae. After this stage is over, the emerging adults awkwardly fly to a plant and repeat the cycle.
What Does Thrips Damage Look Like?
Thrips can damage your plants quickly. They may be small in size but the damage they can cause to your plants can be very serious. They feed on plant juices and sap by biting into plant stems or by using their syringe-like mouths to extract liquid from leaves.
Herbaceous ornamentals and certain vegetable crops are more susceptible to serious injury caused by thrips. These insects can distort the growth of plants and cause damaged leaves to become paper-like and distorted.
Stippling, a spotted appearance, can also appear on leaves and they can fall off prematurely. Flower petals affected by thrips can exhibit uneven coloring and dark streaks caused by feeding.
Thrips can cause cosmetic damage to fruits. In avocadoes and citrus fruits, thrips can cause brown to silvery scabs. On apples, nectarines, and raspberries, they can deform and/or scar developing fruits.
On roses, they get between the petals of the buds and their damage include ugly blooms. They can also affect the leaves making them look damaged.
How to Get Rid of Thrips in the Garden
It’s easy to see why it’s so important to keep thrips out of your garden. Dealing with them involves proper maintenance and vigilance for spotting and responding to problems. Your primary goal should be to reduce places where they may breed.
You should also regularly check your plants for signs of damage and for clusters of pests where leaves are attached to stems. Here are the SEVEN best ways to get rid of thrips:
Remove weeds and grass from around plants, veggies, and fruits to get rid of alternate hosts. Any veggie and fruit crop debris should also be cleared away.
Before bringing new plants into your garden, look for signs of thrips or their damage. If you miss this at the nursery and they end up at home where you notice them, discard the infected plants into trash bags and secure them tightly.
Place blue sticky traps to monitor adult thrips. The yellow traps are for different insects, so make sure you get the correct ones.
Hose off plants that have clusters of thrips.
Release beneficial insects such as minute pirate bugs, ladybugs, and lacewings. For best results, make releases after first knocking down severe infestations with water spray.
Spray with Neem Oil. Use 4 teaspoons of neem oil with 2 teaspoons of a biodegradable soap per gallon of water. Spray in erly morning or in the evening and not in the heat of the day.
Spread Diatomaceous Earth over the soil to disrupt the thrip’s life cycle. You’ll need to reapply after rains.
As you can see thrips can cause major damage to your garden, so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. I hope that the remedies supplied here will help you contend with these pests if you run up against them in your garden.
Have you ever had any issues with thrips? Share what happened and how you combated them in the comments below.
