The Western flower thrips is one variety of thrips that can cause extensive damage on over 500 species of plants.
Learn How to Prevent Thrips and Thrip Damage
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Identifying Thrips
Adult thrips are slender and tiny, at 1 / 50- to 1 / 25-inches long. Their colors can be anywhere from yellow to brown or black, and if you try to get close to them, they will probably leap or fly away. They have narrow, fringed wings. The nymphs look like even smaller adults, though they tend to be light green or yellow rather than darker colors. Their wings are also not fully developed, and they sometimes have red eyes.
Thrips appear to be tiny dark slivers on your plants. It is hard to see their bodies well without a magnifying glass, but up close, they look a bit like lobsters. Shake them onto a white background in order to see them well.
Thrips Damage
Thrips damage includes streaks, silvery speckling, and small white patches. This happens because the thrips suck plant cells from many garden plants, flowers, fruits, and shade trees. If you have a major infestation of thrips, your plants might be stunted with damaged flowers and fruit. The damage that you notice might instead come from the virus that the thrips spread (usually tomato spotted wilt virus).
Photo Credit: University of Florida.
How to Get Rid of Thrips
- To keep thrips populations under control, try using yellow or blue sticky traps.
- Shaking branches to remove the thrips and catching them on a cloth underneath is one easy way to quickly remove the thrips from your plants.
- For onion thrips: Take a dark piece of paper into the garden and knock the onion tops against it; if thrips are present, you will spot their tan-colored bodies on the paper. A couple of treatments with insecticidal soap kills them. Follow the package directions. Spray the plants twice, three days apart, and the thrips should disappear.
- For fruit trees: Spray dormant oil on the trees.
- As a last resort, dust the undersides of leaves with diatomaceous earth.
Photo credit: Steven Arthurs/University of Florida.
How to Prevent Thrips
- For flower thrips on gladiolus: Mix 1 tablespoon Lysol household cleaner with 1-gallon water. Soak gladiolus corms in the liquid and plant while still wet to prevent thrips.
- You can plant various flowers to attract beneficial insects that are natural predators of thrips. Some good predators include pirate bugs, lacewings, and ladybugs. Learn more about attracting those predators.
- For onion and western flower thrips, try releasing minute pirate bugs or the predatory mite Amblyseius cucumeris.
- Reflective mulches can help to hide your plants from thrips.
- If there is a very big thrips problem in your area, some plants have resistant varieties.
- Try not to overfertilize plants, as this can lead to more thrips damage.
Do you have more tips for controlling thrips? Let us know below!
Christopher Burnett
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Ive never been biten..this ariticle has some good idead.
I am having a terrible time with bug bites.....Can you tell me if you have found any solution??
Thank you!
susan
I get bite alot too I have found out the safest thing to use is Avon Skin so soft
I don't get bit when I use this
I Hope it works for you
Thanks yall...hppeffully, eveyone fnds answers.
Just wondering if anyone found anything that will get rid of the thrips? I have a bad infestation in my yard! They aren’t bothering the few flowers I have out front and I don’t have a garden. They are eating me alive though and they get carried in the house by your clothes and, our dog. I’ve tried vinegar, dawn and, and water mixture. I’ve tried neemmax spray and that seemed to help a little bit but it definitely didn’t do what I expected. We have Orkin and, they have came out twice to spray which the second time seemed to help but in a couple days they are all over again. I really don’t know what to do. I appreciate any advice.
My yard is infested with them, so I'm going to call ECO pest control .They spray my yard every six months but will come back sooner if needed. One thing that was not mentioned, they love to bite some people and I am one of those people. They also love gardenias, and most any flower. The bite doesn't last long but very annoying, like dust mites.
Thrips are the major issue for home gardeners. sometimes i get so frustrated from this type of plant diseases.thanks for writing about thrips.
I actually finding for preventing from thrips and got this article perfect solution.
