How to Scare Off Thrips?

I Was Laidback Before I Was a Gardener.

My patience was already limited before I started growing things, and more importantly, my beliefs as a biologist came before my love of plants. My philosophy is “Life wants to live”. If my plant doesn’t want to live, well that’s its problem!

All this to say: thrips, we agree are… (I’m looking for polite words, but I can’t find them.)

OK, let’s just say it: thrips are crap!

This tiny insect parasitizes all parts of the plant: it is therefore necessary to treat leaves, stems and roots to get rid of it.

I told you: I’m lazy. Just soak watering, I find too much at times… Then, treating plants with a product at a certain frequency, repotting, isolating…

No. Just no.

So What Do I Do When I Have These Intruders in My House?

NOTHING!

I can hear you saying: “What? But, but… your plants will die, you’ll contaminate your whole collection, bugs in your house, yuck!”

Yes, I agree with all that.

The fact is, I have a lot of ladybugs at home. Living in the countryside, they’re around all year-round. We don’t know where they come from, and we have learned to tolerate them… (except when they bite my thigh in the middle of the night, but that’s another story). So when I find thrips, I keep my fingers crossed that my predators will do the job. In some plants, a balance is established and the thrips eventually disappear. I see this especially with the plants directly in front of windows, where ladybugs are more numerous because of the light and heat that attract them.

For the others, I have a special treatment…

I unfortunately didn’t keep a photo of my crime, but my dragon fruit chose to host hundreds of thrips last fall. Upon seeing this, I put it out… for the winter! Have you ever seen a snow dragon fruit?

The Passive-Aggressive in Me

I don’t have any rare plants that cost a fortune, just a hundred or so ordinary houseplants, most of them from donated cuttings. Lucky for me! When one of them is sick or infested, I don’t mind letting it die.

In the summer, I take my plants outside and water them with the hose… if I think about it. When I bring them back in the fall, I often have a rather difficult month with them: we don’t understand each other, I forget that the rain doesn’t water them anymore. I neglect them a bit.

At some point, I regain control, but that’s when I sometimes notice infestations! The kind that even my ladybugs can’t get rid of.

Seeing this picture made some people tear their hair out.

I didn’t, and I’ll give you my trick for trying to scare the thrips away:

Put the plant outside and watch it die all winter, taking away the thrips’ food source!

MHOUHAHAHAHA

I am hoping this will drive the bugs away from my house. Did it work? No. After my dragon fruit last winter, it’s now my aloe and my little cactus, affectionately known as Colin, turn to be infested.

Sorry Colin, you were my first plant, I loved you… but you just had to avoid thrips!

Dear aloe: you can go join your predecessors, I didn’t like you anyway.