Bart, You can spray WD40. You should have that in Italy, all the cars, motorcycles and scooters, machines use that. :-)

The fashion trend for rose gardening in 2016 is picnic cups! :-) It's not my style though, but I am having fun seeing all the photos. I think silver cups look better, like silver bells.......spray the cups to silver? :-)

I used WD40 on my blue cups yesterday.

It's Spring here in Ausralia... and I want to give this method a try... but is it necessarily to use blue cups? I was thinking of buying a sheet of blue poster paper and apply canoile oil to it... do you think it will work? I mean what's the purpose of the cups?

Yes, that guy would work too. That's so cute!

Carol

are these for chilli thrips or regular ones?

Being up north mine were for regular thrips. For what it's worth the yellow cups caught tons of rose midge. I had to take them down a while back. It was far to difficult to re coat them as the roses grew. You can bet they are going to be hanging before midge hatch next spring.Then I plan to remove them after about 6 weeks and see how that works.

The yellow cups caught many western flower thrips as well. Sadly they also caught some thrip predators. For what it is worth I also placed some blue cups out to see what they would attract. I set them next to the yellow. Believe this or not they caught nothing. All insects preferred yellow over blue if given a choice.

Oh, didn't know that. What a great experiment! I have blue and yellow cups out too...but on different plants.

Carol

Blue cups work well here for regular flower thrips but I have not experimented with yellow cups yet...

Patty, intriguing about the cup color preference. I want to try it and I wonder if we place them further away from the roses if they would be attracted to the cups more than the roses? Eventually, walk them right out of our garden...lol

Set up a perimeter or better yet a yellow fence and keep it coated. No HOA in my neighborhood. Kentucky rose your so funny.

Walk them right out of our garden. LOL Yellow coated fence!! Love these ideas!!

Carol

Beetles are known to be attracted to yellow (as well as fungus gnats in the house). We have a black blister that sometimes invades around here, and they go nuts over the yellow flowers. I bought some blue cups this summer, but never put them up. I think I may try the yellow cups first. Diane

Hope this will bring this article back to the top...We get thrips on our satsuma plum and nectarine fruit trees has anyone tried hanging the cups in a tree?????

Oh, I bet that will work just dandy!!!

Carol

I'd spray the oil right on tree branches, easier that way. Having a snow storm right now, no thrips here. :-)

When my son stopped by he found my cups a bit embarrassing or perhaps he thought I'd finally lost my mind. Whats a gardener to do? The cups will be back up when the roses are growing in spring. I'm hoping to get them when they first come out this year. By the time I got the cups out last year they already had a good start.

Still can't believe how well they worked. A good deal of the time they were in pairs one female and one male. Should say thou as Ann mentioned there were thrips predators that were caught. Along with many western flower thrips.

Patty, tacky, my garden looked like it was having a party all summer long and it did work. Whether it is the blue cups or the blue gloves, I plan on doing it again next year and earlier, too.

summersrythem....we spray the the trees with neem oil BUT you can't spray the trees during bloom because of the bees that's when the thrips attack.

Does anyone have an idea of which type of lubricant lasted the longest on the cups. I have not yet tried spray such as Canola nor WD40. Since I must use so many darned cups. I redo them where they are sitting. I'm also looking for ways that work the best at not getting any lubricant on the soil.

Campv, you just gave me an idea. Since cucumber beetles are so attracted to yellow. I'm going to gather a pot, some rocks, twiggy branches, yellow and blue spray paint, brush on tack from amazon and bottles. Do kind of really bright bottle tree.

I'll spray the branches blue to place in the pot with rocks to hold them. Coat these with oil. Spray the bottles yellow (perhaps with a little blue design) then coat with tack. Now wouldn't it be a miracle if cucumber beetles were to stick themselves all over the bottles. Y'all will be the first you know if I catch anything.

Best tell my son we will visit him instead.

I think WD40 is a thicker oil, last longer, and it shouldn't hurt any bees, but I am not a bee keeper though.......

Patty, I think I used 50 cups throughout the roses. Good luck with the cucumber beetle approach. There seemed to be more cucumber beetles than usual this past fall and more sawflies. I wonder why.

I noticed that, too KyRose here in Cincy. I wasn't expecting a fall infestation of sawfly after the summer lull, but I think with such an extended season they though it was spring!

I think Henry answered that on here a while back. A non native Bristly roseslug sawfly was somehow imported to Ohio and became established and has spread. You know it's in your area when you see more than one generation of roseslugs. Roseslugs were not such a problem with one generation. They are here in Illinois and I swear they eat more than the regular late spring sawfly.

Found a link if you wish to read Bristly Roseslugs Continue to Cause Damage | BYGL Found a better one which include 3 types of rose slugs. Did not realize that the curled roseslug has 2 generations.Rose and pear slugs (sawflies) - Missouri Botanical Garden

I use blue disposable gloves instead of the cups nowadays. The oil stays on the surface a lot better and application is easy. They also don't make rattling noises on the stick like the cups do. Result is even superior.

Patty, our curled roseslugs are here from late May/June until frost...Our common rose slug is here just a short time...Have not had much damage from RS for 3 years now...

Blue gloves...hummm might experiment with disposable gloves since the blue cups worked well here...

Ok Maybe I am going to spoil it for everyone but here goes. Thrips love light or white colored blooms in general. This is my thought, all the cups everyone is talking about have a white interior. Maybe its not the outside color at all, maybe thrips are attracted to the white interior or maybe just the smell/tast of the oil. Just my crazy engineering mind gone south.

Campv, we could spray the inside and outside of the cups?

Garden Gate magazine's latest issue (February) has a short article about which colors attract which insects, and white and blue were mentioned as the thrips attracting colors. Yellow attracts other insects. The article mentioned these colors in reference to traps that are coated with a "tangle foot" like substance. These traps can be purchased in garden centers (I've never used them). So, it would seem that the white and blue colors cover all the bases. I'll try to get a link to this article later. Diane

Those cups are expensive when you have as many roses and fruit trees as I do. I think I will try this using just those cheap white Styrofoam cups sprayed inside and out and see what happens. I am in Arizona and the Thrips swarm in April-June and are really bad. I have even found them in my wine. Thankfully I saw them before drinking it.

Would it be even cheaper if you paint the tree trunks white and spray WD40 on them? Not a farmer, it might work......, :-)

I have tried spraying both the inside and outside of blue cups that have white insides. Caught more thrips on the outside... (blue) That might not mean a thing though since wind probably can blow thrips into the outside of the cups...(?)

I have not tried yellow or white cups yet...

I've tried yellow, and blue...I didn't see a difiference.

Bumping this up since it's spring. I think I saw a chili thrips damaged stem on a bush this morning. I'm so disappointed and concerned. Couple questions:

Why does the oil have to be "spray." Couldn't you just spread it on with hands or gloves?

How do y'all know those are chili thrips stuck on the cups? I have no idea what they look like, so if I get anything, will it be a chili or a random unlucky gnat?

Socks I'm going to start using the oil and blue gloves after this weekend since it's supposed to be the last rain and I'm curious about your questions too. I planned on just using regular cheap canola oil on blue gloves, not spray oil. I don't really know bugs well enough to know the difference between chilli thrips and a random gnat either. When I talked to the master gardeners in my county, they asked me to send them a sample so they could test it for chilli thrips (basically send them the lubed up glove covered in bugs in a ziplock bag).

Curious what other experienced oilers have to say. :)

I just use a pastry brush and slather on cheap cooking oil on the cups.

Carol

Here's what I saw this morning, So Calif

I remember those long stems with no foliage from last summer

Blue cups etc. coated with oil might not work well for chilli thrips but do work good here for regular flower thrips...

Ok this year has been a surprise... With a very wet Spring the thrips are bad so blue cups are hardly putting a dent in them...So going to make some other adjustments like applying Beneficial Nematodes to the soil late August of this year then again next April and see if that helps... Thanks for the ideas Sam!

How many are still using the oil covered plastic cups (or gloves) for thrips?

I bought them, but haven’t put them out yet.

I think those garden decorative spheres would be a good idea. I was thinking about getting some of those in blue and yellow and spray them with WD40.

Just a thought, WD-40 may last longer as a coating, but it is a petroleum distillate. Canola Oil, while it isn't something I care to eat, at least isn't petroleum and should (hopefully) break down in the environment with less toxicity.

Are these thrips?

It could be just snap off that bud and set in a bowl. Then you can cut or tear it open. When thrips are young they are light colored and zip around quickly. If you use a magnifying glass you’ll see them if they are there.

Oh oh. I think I saw thrips on my Fiji. I guess I will find out when I get those cups out there.

Wow that was quick!