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Florida Gardening

do you worry about bringing home chilli thrips?

12 years ago

I picked up a double Knock Out rose and a Viburnum odoratissimum from the reduced rack at Lowe's for $1 and $2.49. Most of the leaves of the rose were brown and had fallen off and were on the top of the dirt in the pot and a few new leaves were growing back. The viburnum had some distorted foliage at the tips, but I didn't pay too much attention to that. I know that roses can take a lot of abuse and come back and that the viburnum is also hardy.

After I got them home I remembered reading something about knock outs and how chilli thrips loved them. Now I'm wondering if I brought the thrips home.

What do you think? Some photos--

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Comments (5)

amberroses
12 years ago
The rose looks ok to me. The Viburnum I think is ok, but I know less about them. The black spot doesn't look like chilli thrips. HD and Lowes do have chilli thrips on their roses sometimes. Keep an eye on it. The new growth gets all twisted and brown veined. It's nice to get a good deal.
marcia_m
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks for your comments. I decided to just take them back to Lowe's and get my money back. It looks like some kind of sucking insect was on the plants recently and I really didn't need to add any new bugs to my garden. In the future I need to look more closely at any new plants and think before I buy.

I bought a quart sized 'Snow Queen' hibiscus at Lowe's to satisfy my plant 'hunger.' I transplanted to a bigger pot for now and will plant it in the ground in the spring.
Marcia
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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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A couple years after the article Sharon posted was published. This was published. I can’t link to it since I am searching for these articles through my workplace at Caltech, and you would get a broken link, but here is abstract copied below. It seems that an important consideration for a banker plant used to host the predator mites is “tuft domatia”, which are little chambers on the leaves that are meant to house the beneficials. The plants provide little hidey-houses along with pollen :-) The predator mite Amblyseius swirskii is an omnivore, eating both pollen and other mites, thrips, whitefly etc. Selecting an ornamental pepper banker plant for Amblyseius swirskii in floriculture crops. By: Avery, PB et al. Abstract: Preference of phytoseiid mite, Amblyseius swirskii (Athias-Henriot) was assessed on four cultivars of ornamental pepper banker plant candidates; Red Missile (RM), Masquerade (MA), Explosive Ember (EE) and Black Pearl (BP) for potential control of pestiferous insects in floriculture. Significant differences in cultivar preference by A. swirskii was observed in choice experiments whether the test was pre- (with pollen) or during bloom. Overall, female mites laid more eggs when pollen was provided as a food source. The number of tuft domatia per cultivar leaf appeared to positively influence host preference in the choice plant tests pre-bloom. In addition, cultivar RM had the highest mean number +/- A SEM of tuft domatia per leaf (5.1 +/- A 0.3) and motiles per plant (4.0 +/- A 1.2), followed by MA, EE and BP. In choice tests on blooming plants, A. swirskii showed preference for both cultivars RM and MA compared to EE. These experiments indicated that the number of tuft domatia and availability of pollen can influence the host preference of A. swirskii for an ornamental pepper banker plant cultivar. Results from this study will help growers, researchers, educators and extension personnel in understanding the plant phenology promoting adoption of suitable banker plants for managing greenhouse and landscape insect pests.
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annafl
12 years ago
Marcia, I can't tell it from your photos. Nothing tell-tale. However, I learned by bad experience that knock-outs are extremely susceptible to chilli thrips. I had 18 bushes at one time, all bought and planted full of them and I never got rid of them. Pulled all but 2 bushes. They are dormant with the cool weather, but the nymphs are in the soil I think. Anyway, if you use spinosad, this will control them. When I use it in the veggie garden, if I have a bit left over I spray the remaining two bushes. They are nice this time of year and in the spring, but not worth it inbetween. Just my experience.

Anna
saldut
12 years ago
You don't have to 'bring them home' those things are all over the place... I have 8-9 Knock-outs and right now they are recovering from this summer's attack, in my no-spray rose garden I had chili thrips on half the roses and they looked near-death and some did... I am seriously thinking of spraying again, at least during the chili-thrip season.. it is heart-breaking, I did consider shovel-pruning those KOs but have second thoughts, what to replace them with ?? sally
marcia_m
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks, Anna. I like a bargain and I have 'rescued' more plants that I should. I hope I am gaining some wisdom but sometimes the plant lust just strikes and logic goes out the window. I think I did the right thing by taking the plants back.

Sally, our neighborhood is not overly landscaped or gardened, so perhaps the chilli thrips haven't found us yet. I don't like to spray, so whatever starts to look bad or dies, I am going to have to live with.

Isn't that the way, just when you're starting to have fun, something happens to spoil it?? I don't have any suggestions about what you can plant in place of the KOs, Sally. You are warmer than I am. We are farther from any ocean or canals and sorry we don't have the temperature moderation the water provides. If we were warmer, I'd try some more colorful leaved tropicals.

Still learning how to garden in Florida,
Marcia

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