whats your feelings on this? my grows pretty clean I mop the floor, wash walls, tables ect dont leave leaves on floor or dirt. ( for most part, usually do sweep once day) and I have still had these suckers, in middle of a fairly warm RI winter twice now. I dunked everything and treated soil the first time, seemed very effective and was supper pleased I could irradiate them in a 9 hour day. bout month or so later ( I assume its not same infestion) and a new round of soil, HP promix ( doubt the prob ) and Fox Farm Ocean Forest and bam..... again thoughts?
I actually got hit with thrips not too long ago, did a great deal of research. first i found a spray i could make at home with garlic soap and a lil oil, did nothing.. even tried with jalepenios in it still nothing. Finnally, after they had completely destroyed my best plant, they always go for the best plant just fyi, i was fed up and went to lowes to see if they had anything that said kills them. Sure enough they did, ORTHO flower, fruit, and vegetable insect killer, had a picture of a thrip right inside the label. Now, lets get into a little biology here. First thing you should know, thrips are an asexually reproducing organism that eat the leaves of foliage for about two days as a larvea or worm. Then, they cacoon themselves in soil. They use the soil for protection as they metamorphasize. When they emerge from the soil they are now a flying insect generally triangular in shape about as big as a knat. These adults then lay eggs on the underside of leaves and on stems, which hatch as larvea and the process repeats itself. Without a doubt all of your infestations are from the first infestation. Only one thrip need survive and be given enough time to spawn more. They are so small that it is very hard to know if they are gone. Knowing what i know now i'd use this insectiside once a week or two weeks as a preventative measure. During an infestation I would use it for 3 days in a row to start then every other day for a week then every three days for two weeks then if you see no pests in your house like knats or worms on the leaves ease off gradually until you are at normal preventative schedule. I saw 0 alive worms after my first application. That is what this insectiside does it kills the larvea only. After a day or two I started seeing that the leaves were being wounded like a worm was eating them, what this was was newborn larvea eating the leaves right after hatching and then dieing from the insectiside. the life cycle of a thrip in total is about 12- 14 days, from cacoon to death is about 8 - 10 days meaning even after 10 days you could still have adults laying eggs and this insectiside doesn't seem to kill the adults at all. so focus on killing the larvea or worms but put up some tack strips close to your plants( I know they suck and can be real sticky but you need to thin out the adults too)