A sheet of foil laid down as a mulch is supposed to eliminate the safe place that thrips usually visit on the plant -- the underside of the leaves.

In a study, it was more effective than any of the strongest, most toxic pesticides available.

Interesting, Feldon. I always have my first TSWV sighting on new growth at the top of the plant, I guess because they like to go into the newly opened blossoms. Now that my plants are around seven feet tall, I'm wondering if laying foil on the ground would do any good. Foil is cheap though, so it's worth a try. Thanks.

Yes, I thought about this too. That it would only protect the bottom few inches of the plant. And in Houston, because of fungus, we generally prune off the bottom 12"-18" of foliage once the plants are 3'-4' tall.

*****delete*****

Sevin won't protect you from TSWV. The little bugs that spread the virus, thrips, go [I]inside[/I] the blossom and that's how the plant is infected. I am using the blue sticky traps that are supposed to attract the thrips but I've lost two plants to TSWV so far this season. Last year I lost almost all my tomatoes to this virus. I feel your pain, believe me.

FYI for people doing pie tins or tin baking sheets. . . make sure you stake them into the ground somehow because strong winds make them damage your stems (even if you've prepped the hole with tape). . . :oP

[quote=lakeshorenc;63651]Well I'm pretty upset because all most all my tomatoes are infected with this. What I would like to know is if I would have continued with putting sevins dust on my plants from the beginning would I have this problem. I happened to post at another site that I was doing that and was made to feel a fool of. Now I am not going to have a good season because I let people influence me. Hey digdirt if your out there THANKS ALOT, Theresa (lot of money and time spent for a big disappointment)[/quote]

Welcome to Tville! I concur with shelleybean -- it's unlikely Sevin would have helped you. The only way it [B]might[/B] have the potential to help (in theory) is if one is able to keep plants coated top to bottom 24/7.

On a side note, digdirt is not a member here as far as I know. But I didn't find his post to you to be totally unreasonable over at GW, and in my opinion, he generally has worthwhile information to offer.

I'm pulling about one a day now, 28 out of 32 left. I sprayed the heck out of them 2 days ago with a miticide, fungicide, insecticide spray(concentrating on the blossoms). I had this last year and thought it was speck. Even my upside down tomato got the virus. Its very depressing to pull up 6 foot tall tomato plant with 20 plus little green babies on it . I'm just praying for my others ,though I've seen spots on most but not the wilt yet. I'm waiting until I see the wilt to pull them and cutting off the spotted leaves from the others although this is probable useless. Theresa

Egads!
To sound redundant, I also feel your pain.... It's really a bummer to pull a plant loaded with tomatoes because of wilt. As an experiment, I've taken to vigorous leaf trimming of some of my plants I suspecy have "the wilt". Oddly enough 2 of the non heirlooms- brandyboy and big beef are pumping iron. I've had to shade the lower part of the plants to protect the fruit from sunscald, but the plants have new and so far healthy growth. But I still intend to to look for recs. for disease resistant plants. Good luck to you!

Thanks, Feldon for this tip.
I am going to try aluminum foil also; heck, it's cheap and cheerful to boot.

Michele, are you catching many thrips on the blue sticky traps? I catch thousands on yellow stickies (when I haven't run out of them!).

TSWV ruined my approx 200 plants last season :evil: Must place an order for new ones!

Patrina

Yes, Patrina. I have both the blue and yellow traps and they are stuck on both, along with a bunch of other bugs. The blue ones are specifically for thrips. I use those up high and the yellow ones on stakes down lower. I'm not sure if it's these traps or just that we had a colder winter this year but I've only lost two plants so far, and that's much better than last year. I think I'll continue to use them every year, both the blue and the yellow.

The traps are certainly not foolproof. Found a third plant infected this morning. I'll pull it this afternoon. :(

Just found this thread tonight. Interesting as I've lost several plants with TSWV this year. By far the worst I've ever had it. I had one row with onions on each side and the other row had onions on one side. These two rows accounted for 33 out of 86 plants. But 16 of the 20 I've lost so far to TSWV was from these two rows. Some say the onions are a host for the thrips. Some say I have onion thrips. The row with onions on both sides I lost 10 out of 16. It may all be a coincindence I'm not sure. Most of the onions are ready to pull anyway so going to pull all and see if that helps. I have read several articles on the internet. Have sprayed with a permethrin spray one recommended on some and it seems to of slowed down the spread. Maybe another conincidence. I was at the point I had to do something. I probably left a few too long wanting to get fruits from some to save seeds but the majority I pulled fairly quick. It is a helpless feeling. And most of the ones I pulled had fruit on them. Some were loaded. I may try the foil some but like others most of mine are tall now except for the sprawlers. And it was them that I lost the most of. Best wishes to all on avoiding it. Jay

In that situation, I'd take drastic measures. Screen porch material can't be THAT much? Tending to the plants would be a bummer unless you make hinged sections that can be opened easily.

Feldon, unfortunately (and I have researched this) porch screening doesn't block thrips as well as products designed for thrip exclusion. The weave is too large.

Thrips aren't even blocked from many commercial insect screening --I have linked a study that shows alot of screening sold is no better than the type of screening you mentioned.

Only two types No Thrips and Bugbed 123 rate high for blocking thrips.

Screening for thrips has such a tight weave greenhouses can run into air circulation problems. Bugbed 123 is a little better in this regard than NO Thrips screening.

[URL]http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/floriculture/NCCFGA/pdf/bulletins/1997/Apr1997.pdf[/URL]


[URL]http://www.green-tek.com/PDFs/Insect.PDF[/URL]


With regular fiberglass window screening you would get around 50% exclusion as compared to 90% with No Thrips and Bugbed 123. Maybe a little is better than none but I did not want you to think that porch screening would solve a thrip problem completely.

Good point MsCowpea.

Thrips are as small as fleas and can get through pretty much anything that's not
"solid". This year was pretty bad for TSWV, including my favorite Cuostralee going
down to it.

I did confirm a couple of details about it this year.

1. Infected plants will not recover. The fruit will be effected and look terrible.
2. Early removal of bad foliage also doesn't help. My dad did this on one of
his plants, and the plant looked fine. However, the fruit later showed
significant effects of the TSWV....


Lee

I experienced the same thing as Lee's dad. I found one branch that looked fishy on a huge Lollipop plant I had. I normally first see TSWV at the top of the plant on the newest foliage but this branch was halfway down the plant. I cut it off and for several weeks thought I must have been wrong and the plant was fine. This plant was a monster and very dense and much later, I discovered that the whole inside of the plant was covered with TSWV spots. This was a cherry plant and I had planted all my cherries by the back door. I'd already lost two tomatoes in my main garden area but removed those quickly.

This year was not as bad for me as 2006 in terms of TSWV but I can't say if that's because it was colder from mid January on or because I was so much quicker to remove infected plants this time. Maybe both. In any case, I'm afraid this is something those of us in this area are going to have to start dealing with [I]every[/I] season from now on, not just when we have a mild winter.

Just saw the post by Patrina mentioning the use of yellow sticky cards and catching lots of thrips. I have read that thrips do prefer blue but if you have whitefly AND thrips go ahead and use the yellow.

But this has been my experience using sticky cards--you go down to the garden and marvel at the tons of bugs stuck on the card--

I took the card and looked under a high-powered microscope
and NO thrips. I am afraid I was just catching alot of harmless insects and beneficials as well.

But I have to say I have never seen alot of thrips on my plants even in the year I suffered heavily from TSWV.

So I was wondering do the rest of you really have a heavy infestation of thrips --so that you see them on all your plants. Have you looked at the cards (even with a 10x lens) to see what you are really catching?

I set out yellow sticky cards and early in the season caught quite a few whiteflies. Now I am seeing mostly aphids. My cards aren't sticky enough to hold larger insects like butterflies or bees.

What beneficial insects did you have in mind?

The instructions say to place the cards every seven feet, or something like that. Even on plants where the cards were hung, I still sometimes got TSWV. Both my blue and yellow cards caught a lot of bugs, including one ladybug and lots of houseflies. Most of what I see on there is tiny little black bugs with wings, but I don't know for sure what they are. I wish mosquitos would get stuck to those things! So combined with the weather and my quicker response to the disease, I can't say whether the cards really helped or not. In 2006 with an unusually mild winter, and no bug cards, I lost three quarters of my plants to the virus, as opposed to one quarter this year. That's all I know. :?: :?: :?:

BCDay, no I don't mean anything large like bees and butterflies. More like tiny wasps and flies. Less than 1/8 "--I could never really ID them as they are so mashed on the card but definately not thrips. More gnat-like. (Like Michele says tiny black bugs with wings.)

I just decided since I really wasn't catching any thrips I didn't want to use the cards and risk eliminating possible beneficials.

(Reminded me of those bug zappers where it was found they kill far more beneficial insects than mosquitoes. They can even increase the number of female mosquitoes which are the ones that actually bite. {Cornell} )

This has been my experience--as I said I never really see all that many thrips anyway when I did get TSWV. If a person really is catching alot of thrips it would be worth it but I think you need a hand lens to know for sure.

I feel like I should choose fewer varieties and grow more of each because of this virus. I'm bound to lose plants, so I'm no longer comfortable growing one of anything. I'm also considering growing back ups for my plants and keeping them isolated from the rest of the garden.

I hate this disease! The plants have barely started to grow buds and this Cheeky F2 plant is already infected. I've only just put up sticky traps for this second plantout. :(

[IMG]http://www.feldoncentral.com/garden/photos/d/8159-2/Diseased+Cheeky+F2.jpeg[/IMG]

[URL="http://www.feldoncentral.com/garden/photos/v/memberphotos/Patrina/Dwarf_Project/Diseased+Cheeky+F2.jpeg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=2"]Click for larger image[/URL]

PP

I hate it, too. I'm sorry to see it's a problem again. :x

Patrina, I have a few questions for you about the TSWV, if that's okay.

First, when you have cold weather, how cold does it typically get? If it's colder than normal, do you see any improvement when you set your plants out or is it pretty much the same amount of damage no matter what? And have you seen a significant increase in TSWV in the last three years?

And we'll continue to discuss what to do to get some relief from this awful virus as we go...I hope we can beat it.

For those who are not familiar, it's just awful. It can wipe out your [U]entire[/U] tomato garden. And now fusarium has settled into my garden too so I don't know what 2008 will hold. 2006 and 2007 were terrible tomato years, but 2005 was the best I'd ever had. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you, Patrina!

We got hit hard by TSWV this past year, so does anyone know where the best place to buy this black/silver mulch is? I am going to spread the tomatoes out (we have 20+ acres) and use that mulch, if I can find it.

Thanks,

Kent & Kathy, in Nebraska

Kent and Kathy, Here's a link for the silver mulch.
[url]http://www.groworganic.com/item_MM405_BriteNup_Silver_Mulch_05_Mil_30X.html[/url]

[quote=shelleybean;81958]Patrina, I have a few questions for you about the TSWV, if that's okay.

First, when you have cold weather, how cold does it typically get? If it's colder than normal, do you see any improvement when you set your plants out or is it pretty much the same amount of damage no matter what? And have you seen a significant increase in TSWV in the last three years?
[/quote]

Ohhh, sorry for taking so long to reply - been very very busy :dizzy: Um, it doesn't really get very cold here, no frosts, and I've only been growing 4 years approx and haven't noticed much change over that period. I didn't lose any plants in the front garden beds to TSWV, but they were planted early. I've already culled 5 plants out back that were planted out on 22 Nov. The main difference at this time is lots of hot weather, the thrips here LOVE it!

Oh, btw, I tossed a whole bunch of old CDs under my plants to reflect light up into the bushes to deter bugs and grubs. Those CDs are very silvery bright as you know, but the thrips crawled all over them - they always had thrips on them in fact, so I don't think shiny mulch is likely to deter them :|

Patrina

Thanks for the info!