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Heather

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Has anyone ever had Thrips?
Brian has been really helping me with this but I am wondering if anyone else has had these. We aren't really *certain* that they are thrips but they are acting accordingly.

They are either yellow and like a pin-prick:
.

or grey and look like this:
- --

They only like plants with besseae in the breeding and they prefer new growth.

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas? I can take a photo tomorrow of the "damage" (wah!) if necessary.
 
Okay here are a couple photos - they aren't great but you can see the plants look like hell.

Anyone ever sprayed besseaes before? They are such sulky plants, I'm concerned.
3edec4d9.jpg

7fa1c6f4.jpg
 
I haven't *seen* any in the mix.

I am quite sure they are not mites. They are not on the underside of the leaves, but in the crown. They move if you blow on them. They seem to leave a sort of greasy, honeydew like substance behind. They are yellow pinpricks or little grey 2-jointed bodies. I think maybe one is the larvae and one is the adult? I cannot find an adequate photo online though (they're all too highly magnified to help).

They are really too small to get a photograph of.
 
Get that Bayer household and garden spray in the tealish bottle. It has pyrethrins and oil and seems to work with minimal stress on the plant
 
Well, I'm going to use this stuff that Brian recommended, but I just sort of wondered if there was anyone else out there who had even had thrips before on their plants. I also wondered if anyone had ever had issues with besseae in particular and use of pesticides.

Phrags are usually so nice and pest-free, these guys caught me off guard!

Thanks.
 
I've had thrips. About a year to the day I had to go to Montreal for 9 days and while I was go the temperature increase quite a bit. This caused the thrips lifecycle to go from about 3 weeks to 3 or 4 days. Needless to say when I returned the thrip population had exploded! Oh yeah, some of there life cycle takes place in the soil/media.

They can do a lot of damage. Two sprays of Malithion killed them dead!

Your description sounds like them, I never saw yellow ones, but I say black/dark grey narrow guys. They also leave little black shiney dots of feces on the leaf surfaces. They cause a lot of pitting.

I found that they attacked my paphs more then my phrags, but at the time I had way more paphs then phrags.

Heres some links...

http://ipmofalaska.homestead.com/files/thrips.html

http://www.ipmofalaska.com/files/greenhousebulletins.html

Good luck!
 
I never saw them in there, but I read it somewhere on the web that part of their lifecycle occurs in the media

Kyle
 
Yeah, me too.
I am thinking seriously about repotting everything in the not too distant future (since my root growth is excellent) but will spray first.

The other issue I have going on with my besseaes right now is that all the new OZ crosses are very stoloniferous and I need to pot them all deeper than I originally thought. So that's two good reasons.
 
likespaphs said:
yeh, sometimes they go after the leaves, though they prefer flowers.

Luckily (maybe?) I don't have much in spike right now. Only two plants, and I seem to be finding them more in the crown of those as well, and not (that I can see anyway) near the buds. We'll see when they bloom I suppose. Actually they are mostly leaving those two plants alone, I've only found a couple yellow ones on them. It is the 14 besseaes they really are finding tasty. And none of those are in spike. Both the yellow and grey ones. This morning, I went to smush one on a relatively new leaf and the whole leaf came off! :confused:
 
Heather said:
Luckily (maybe?) I don't have much in spike right now. Only two plants, and I seem to be finding them more in the crown of those as well, and not (that I can see anyway) near the buds. We'll see when they bloom I suppose. Actually they are mostly leaving those two plants alone, I've only found a couple yellow ones on them. It is the 14 besseaes they really are finding tasty. And none of those are in spike. Both the yellow and grey ones. This morning, I went to smush one on a relatively new leaf and the whole leaf came off! :confused:

Dont feel too bad Heather, mine are taking quite a beating too. I have some aweful looking plants right now due to those buggers.
 
Right now I have said "screw it" to this earth friendly crap and have gone back to my good friend malathion.
 

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