Chilli Thrips: did this winter's freeze kill them off?

14 years ago

I don't know if anyone can answer this question just yet, but I thought I would put it out there.

Last year, I had my first encounter with an awful invader to the area. Apparently most rose gardeners around New Orleans also did. Nothing local seemed to go after them, and they did tremendous damage to my roses until I found an effective chemical intervention--spinosad. It did the trick, but I used it every other week through the fall and winter until the freezing temps came. This was our coldest winter in several years. I heard somewhere that the hard freezes might have killed off the Chilli Thrips. Does anyone have any info about that theory? I haven't resorted yet this year to spraying insecticides again, but I'm watching the plants like a hawk for signs of trouble. The main up-side to the spinosad routine last year was that it seems to have nicely controlled the western flower thrips as well, and I was able to stop spraying flower buds with anything else.

My suspicion is that somewhere out there some chilli thrips survived, and it may just be a matter of time until they repopulate. What do you all think?

Mike

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Comments (6)

york_rose
14 years ago
Mike, I don't if your local winter this year was cold enough to totally wipe them out or not, but based upon this pest alert, and its map, produced four years ago by the USDA's quarantine agency ("APHIS"), I think it's safe to say that regardless of whether they were or were not, they will certainly be back sooner or later.

Ultimately it looks like they're predicting that chili thrips are probably even going to be a problem for the rosarians in the Seattle area.
jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
14 years ago
All I can say is, who opened pandora's box?
Mike, I hope you and others get a break from Chilli Thrips
this growing season. Best of luck!
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The Southern Ag product is cheaper (you don't get as much). I haven't used it but the word around the rose society is that it doesn't work as well as the Dow product. Also, some folks in the rose society used the Worms way version and the "carrier" had a bad effect on roses. I think they got spray burn. The last time I got Conserve it was over $100 for a quart. I got that from Tampa Agricultural supply. Rosemania.com carries it too. For a home gardener it will last a long time. Chili Thrips perfer some roses more than others. We should spread the word what they like/don't like. I know that they leave Louis Philippe alone. One of my new red HTs (Vina Russo) is a chili thrip magnet!
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Ive been fighting thrips on my blueberry bushes for 3 years now in South Houston. They reck shop on new growth late in the fall season and thats the growth that produces your flower buds for spring fruit. Ive been using spinosad for 3 years and try not to spray untill after harvest. They seem to peek in Aug and Sept in my area. Ive done alittle research on them and kaolin clay (surround) is suppost to be pretty effective on thrips plus it helps plants deal with heat which is a bonus in my area. I ordered some surround this spring and will start using it after harvest this year. Hopefully I wont have to spray spinosad anymore. I did notice after spraying spinosad it would knock them back for a couple weeks then seemed like they came back even stronger. It does kill beneficials as well. Dont believe every thing you read on those labels. The lady bugs and lace wings were no where to be found after spraying for months! Dont use it unless you have too. I believe it does more harm than good. A healthy population of lace wings and lady bugs I think can possibably keep there numbers in check but Im afraid they are here to stay. The only plants I dont see alot of damage on here from thrips are rabbiteye blueberries, okra and tomatoes. They do hit the rabbiteyes but not very much at all. Bellpepper, black berry, strawberry, Southern High Bush Blueberry all get attacked in a bad way.
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Oh my goodness, I grow so many different plants and most of them are not affected by chilli thrips, at least not so far. Blue plumbago is listed as one of the susceptible plants, but they haven't bothered mine yet. It may be that the few freezing nights San Antonio experiences every winter is holding them in check. Plus I think it's important to remove the plants that are most susceptible. After the roses and salvia were removed there definitely were fewer chilli thrips on other plants in succeeding years. That American smoke tree is looking awful and may be a vector. It's coming down next week.. Some of my favorites plants for color are bougainvilleas, Fanick's and First Lady phlox, and several varieties of shrimp plants. None of these have shown any chilli thrips damage. I've recently gotten into plumeria; so far so good. I post a lot of photos on the Texas GW. So rather than list the plants I grow that are not (yet) affected by chilli thrips maybe it would be better to do a quick scroll through a few threads here, here, here, here, here. At one time I had 150 roses. I loved them, but I'm having just as much fun now with a whole new pallet of plants..
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So this sounds like my daily struggle. The good news is that it gets better in the winter months. The bad news is that, once established, colonies of Chili Thrips will be with you for years. With that said, here are my suggestions. 1.) Nothing will work like Conserve, short of it being the really heavy stuff that will obliterate your bug eco-system balance. The Bayer stuff won't scratch the surfact, the Ortho stuff works a little better but will leave you without the good bugs and, thus, will create a bigger problem later, and the commercial grade stuff will end up affecting YOUR health (not worth it). 2.) DO NOT cut back your roses until temperatures drop down to the high 60s. In the summer months leave as much of the annual growth alone as possible. Cut back damaged growth but spray immediately after. 3.) DO NOT fertilize in the summer. I know that in my garden I have a limited window for rose growth and that I have to plan accordingly. My summers are everyone else's winters. At the end of the summer I know that I will have losses. 4.) Thrips won't kill your rose bush, the fungal and diseases that get into your plants cells due to Thrips damage will. With that said, find a fungicide spray cycle that works and do that year round. Happy healthy roses weather Thrips way better than ones that are compromised. 5.) Keep grasses as far away as possible from your roses. From my experience, the roses that displayed the greatest Chili Thrips infestations were often the ones with tall weeds/grass growing around them. Keep your beds clean and as free of weeds as possible. Perhaps my suggestions are over simplistic or perhaps not. I know that this has worked for me. Good Luck, Adrian.
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mike_in_new_orleans
Original Author
14 years ago
York Rose, I'm afraid you might be right about the Chilli Thrips inevitably returning. Just wondering if anyone has any "inside scoop" on the issue.

Jim, thanks for the well-wishes; as for Pandora's box, I guess we owe that one to international commerce and travel. Someone at our local Ag. extension told me they find out about multiple new invasive species of both insects and diseases pretty much every year. Generally, that's a very bad thing for the ecosystem. Every so often it's benign. For example, New Orleans is now full of many thousands of green parots that live in the local palm trees (palm trees also NOT native). No one knows for sure where they came from, but Many parts of Florida also have the same species (quaker parots). Luckily, it seems the quaker birds have an almost identical dietary need to the Carolina Parakeet that went extinct here a century or so ago. So the new birds fit right in. They're fun to watch, too. (Sorry, got off subject there)

Mike
jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
14 years ago
Mike,

I would love to see parrots flying around here. Cool!
Well, have a successful 2010 gardening season! Maybe you can train those parrots to eat thrips. ;-)
michaelg
14 years ago
Mike, you might get some months' respite, but I doubt they are gone for good. I wanted to suggest that you ought to be using a rotation or tank mix of insecticides, because the CTs in parts of Florida have already evolved resistance to spinosad. See fact sheets from extension services for suggestions.

Let us know if they show up.
mike_in_new_orleans
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks, MichaelG. I actually did rotate in a couple other insecticides last fall that were supposed to be indicated for western flower thrips. I don't really know how much difference they make. What was discouraging was hearing others report that using only those other specific insecticides without spinosad had no significant positive effect. I can't recall off the top of my head which chemicals, but I think they were from Bayer and Ortho.

Has anyone discovered anything else that works? I am very concerned about the prospect of the little devils developing immunity. Ack!

Chilli Thrips: did this winter's freeze kill them off?

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york_rose

jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6

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Chilli Thrips: did this winter's freeze kill them off?

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york_rose

jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6

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