Predators - Amblyseius cucumeris vs. Thrips
By Urban Garden Magazine November 17, 2010
What Are Thrips?
When growing your favorite fruits, flowers or veggies in your garden, sooner or later you'll have to deal with thrips feasting on your plants. Usually, the first signs of thrips in your garden will be the visual damage they do to your plants' leaves. This damage will appear as small, slug like, silvery trails accompanied by patches of white/yellow spots on the leaves. This is the result of thrips piercing the leaf tissue and sucking out the contents of the cells. You may also see accompanying tiny black spots, which are thrips’ droppings. So, not only do they eat your plants but they poop all over them too. Don’t you just love ‘em?
There’s a huge variety of thrips species that feed on cultivated plants, including onion thrips (Thrips tabaci), melon thrips (Thrips palmi) and tobacco thrips (Frankliniella fusca), but worldwide, the most common pests of this species are the western flower thrips (Frankliniella occodentalis). There are subtle differences in color and size among the species, but seeing as western flower thrips are the most common, we'll focus on them.
Useless Factoid: You can have many thrips but there is no such thing as a single thrip. Like deer, sheep and pants, the word thrips is used for both singular and plural references.
© 2012 Urban Garden Magazine
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