Is this little thing really what's destroyed my gardens?

[z_willus_d]

Thanks again Kurt. I might bite on the NEOSEIULUS CUCUMERIS (BNCUCP-10 pks - $16.99) offering. Worth a try at least.

[lakelady]

Naysen, every year I buy a bunch of ladybugs from an organic garden center here. They are refrigerated (they sleep when cold) and at night I go outside and sprinkle a small handful of them into the gardens over a series of several days. Yesterday I saw a bunch of them hanging out and they didn't fly away so I'm assuming there is some good bug food for them to eat there . They are about 6 dollars here for a container that probably has hundreds of them.

I'm thinking of getting the praying mantis eggs next ,but they eat ladybugs in addition to the bad bugs too.

Ladybugs DO eat thrips, not sure about praying mantis, but I've read they have a voracious appetite.

[Mlm1]

Naysen, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles but it may not be so bad. I also had a thrip infestation this year - noticed it about 2 to 3 weeks ago. I always have some thrip when the grasses and weeds die on the levee behind me and the thrip move to live plants. This year seemed worse but I think it is because I replaced my lawn with native annuals. It was a beautiful wildflower meadow for 2 months then died with the rest of the levee annuals so probably I was hosting more thrip than normal or possibly it is a bad thrip year in our area. I emailed arbico organics and asked for a recommendation for thrip in our area. (not all predators do well in our dry hot weather ). Their recommendation was lady bugs or lace wings. It is expensive to order live lacewing larva or adult but not bad for the eggs. The eggs take a few weeks to hatch and be useful. So far I haven't done anything except give the plants a brisk spray with water to knock off as many as I can and gave the plants some micronutrients (azomite) and organic tomato food. I'm still considering ordering lacewing eggs but I am starting to see more ladybugs in my yard. Although I had some flowers drop in the last few weeks most of the plants are starting to set fruit again so I may not do anything. I think next year I will order lacewing eggs early so they are hatched about the time the local annuals die. I have never sprayed with any pesticide in my yard because I want the butterflies and native bees. So far it seems the benificials always show up soon after the pests. Hopefully that helps.

Marla

[z_willus_d]

Lakelady, I hope the ladybugs work out well for you. In my past experience, the lady bugs just seemed to fly off after a day or so. Probably on the wind to various neighboring yards. I haven't yet tried meting out the bugs/eggs over a span of time, and they are so cheap it probably wouldn't hurt to try. I have a hillside that abuts a greenbelt, and the hillside itself my garden area and main backyard. Both the hillside and the greenbelt are not but dry grass and weeds now, so I think Marla was right in her suggestion that they move on to live plant material after the original host area dries up and dies. I probably have an infinite supply of thrip warriors ready to charge the hill and make for the relative safety and luxury of my fertile garden. Probably one solution would be to weed hack down the hillside and remove all the refuse, and do this well before everything dries up. That would also help with the potential fire hazard the dry grasses represent as well.

One of the problems is that even if I find a way to control/remove the thrips(and leaf-hoppers), they seem to have already inflicted mortal damage. I'm hopeful I can defer the end long enough to achieve some harvest this season.

Marla/Lakelady, let us know how your beneficial bug tactics pan out over the season.

Thanks,
Naysen

[lakelady]

I'm sure the ladybugs do fly away; the garden center told me to spread the dispersal out over 4-5 days. They fly away in the hot sun, but hang around a few days if you put them out in the evenings or dusk.

Maybe I need to find out what plants they like to BREED on and plant some of those!

[lakelady]

ah, here we go !

http://www.mcshanesnursery.com/how-t...-for-ladybugs/

[z_willus_d]

Nice little read. I wonder if they do as well against thrips as they do for aphids. I'm coming to realize much of my plant malaise is also due to mass fusarium as well as the other issues brought on by the thrips, though I don't know that I can pin the F and V on them.
Good luck with your release!
-naysen

[z_willus_d]

Sure, my phone camera is pretty much worthless for up-close captures, but I thought I'd post these pics anyway. I'm trying to harvest pollen from my corn tassels to use in manual pollination of the silk that's now showing. I was amazed at how many thrips came out of the tassels; certainly more thrips than pollen.

One visitor I was happy to see fall out were 3 or 4 small black insects that seemed to be having a field day chewing up the thrips. I tried to capture it below, but you really can't see that it has an adult thrip in its chompers. Very cool stuff. Now if I just had another hundred thousand of these soldiers working on my side. Could they be pirate bugs?
-naysen

[RobinB]

I usually get some thrip damage on my tomato seedlings (see photo below). I never knew what they were until this year. I finally found this article http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7429.html which has a photo that looked like the damage that I have been experiencing every year (white areas with black stippling). I sprayed my plants less than a week ago with Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew (Spinosad) and I have not noticed any more new damage but I never looked inside the blossoms! I also never knew that there were that many different kinds of these little buggers!

[z_willus_d]

Robin, yes, the thrips abound everywhere. Maybe they'll stop eating the young scrumptious foliage once sprayed, but the spray doesn't seem to deter them one iota once they make their way up and into the blossoms. It's like a kind of safe have for them. After all, who is going to open up the flower organs one by one and spray inside, obviously so doing would also render the blossom likely defunct, if not lay a poison trap for a poor unsuspecting honeybee. Perhaps more of these small black insectivors/thripivores (made that up) are the answer.

Good luck,
Naysen

[RobinB]

Naysen,

I do hope that your tomatoes recover! Keep us posted.

I checked, and three plants out of 12 in one raised bed have one or two thrips inside each of the blossoms, most do not have anything inside the blossoms, but there are thrips on all the leaves. It's not a full out invasion... YET. I didn't spray these plants last week, just all my young plants because I saw the damage mentioned above. I plan to spray everything with the Spinosad but I have to wait for the wind to die down and it may be Saturday before that happens. Growing tomatoes in Reno is basically like growing tomatoes in a wind tunnel. It's often hard to find a day when I can spray.

[lakelady]

Naysen, how are you making out? I was thinking of you because this weekend I stopped at my local organic (mostly) gardening center. We've become great friends and I bring them some plants etc., to showcase their beautiful planters (they had no idea what dwarf tomatoes were!). Anyhow, one of the girls gave me a container with 2 cocoon like cases in it that house praying mantids. I have hung them up in 2 of the gardens and now am awaiting their entry into the garden. I do find a ladybug here or there so maybe not all of them flew away. Bad news is that I've heard the praying mantids eat ladybugs too, they have a voracious appetite. The other thing I thought of for you.....if you have blossoms that have not opened yet....perhaps spraying them, then covering them like you do when saving seed pure...I would think that they will open, minus any thrips, then once pollinated, you can safely remove the covering. Lot of work, and probably would work best on varieties that form clusters. I did note that covering blossoms does lead to some blossom drop on my own plants. I used reemay fabric.

[z_willus_d]

Hi Antoniette, well I'm out of town right now, but as of last check, the garden was hanging on, and I'm even getting a few ripe fruit. So far, the standout for flavor has been Goose creek -- man that plant can put out the maters. I'm still succumbing to some kind of disease or condition, and really need to ensure I've got it nailed down by end of season. Thrips abound in every flower, so I'm not sure any amount of neem will really phase them. I worry that spraying the flowers may affect their ultimate virility. I hadn't considered trying to keep the thrips out by covering -- I'm not sure I could get the cover-wrap tight enough.

All the best,
Naysen

[Mlm1]

Naysen, that's great your garden is hanging in there and you are getting some tomatoes. My Goose Creek is still green but I'm glad to hear it will be tasty. Have a good trip and I hope you come home to a productive garden.
Marla

[z_willus_d]

Or something like that. So here I am almost exactly a year later, this time growing mainly grafted tomato vines, and I find myself scratching my head over the same problem: an upward Yellowing of leaves on my near mature to mature tomato plants.

It was about the same time last year when my plants had been setting fruit for about 3+ weeks and were getting to be mature in their 5' plus size and as the heat of early summer started to kick in, then I began to see this yellowing of leaves leading to total branch necrosis. At first just a few at the bottom of the plant, then quickly advancing to the majority of the vine except the very top quarter of new growth. And now I'm dealing with the same conditions and symptoms, only this year with yet another new bed+soil (and the old) and with grafted vines.

Toward the end of the season last year, I had convinced myself that I must have Fusarium of some sort, but when I finally pulled the plants and checked for the telltale signs of browning in the stem tissue, there was none to be found. It was also a bit hard to believe, in retrospect, as I was dealing with mostly brand new soil/grow-media. So now I have grafted vines that should be resistant to 2 forms of fusarium, thus all the more reason to doubt an outbreak of it.

So what else could it be? Well, Steve (Heritage) did find Tomato Russet Mites (TMRs) on a sample of a dying seedling that I sent him several weeks back. But those seedlings were exhibiting different symptoms from what I have here. Also, since learning of what Steve found, I've gone on the offensive with an organic spraying campaign that's involved every other day sprayings of things like Neem, Pyrethren, BT, Mineral Oil, Safer Soap, DE dashing, Spinosad, and more elaborate fungal products. I've spent many many hours examining my foliage from different points on the plant under a 40x hand microscope, and I find no evidence of mites. Also, I am not finding any bronzing of the the stems of the plants.

I do find a dead thrips here and there, and sometimes a bit of evidence of thrips damage. But with all my spraying, I've managed to keep the thrips invasion somewhat under control, though they have a way of spiking their population back if I haven't recently sprayed Spinosad. Thrips cause a whole other class of problems (flower drop, virus vectors, etc.), but I don't believe they are the source of my yellowing leaves.

Not all of the vines show the problem as much as others. Those most effected are (all grafted to Maxifort):
- All 4 of my Wes plants (the more mature the plant, the worst the problem)
- 1Work Release Paste
- 2 Van Wert Ohio vines
- 1 Brandywine Sudduth's (potato leaf and shows wilting sogginess of leaves that the other regular leave vines do not
- 1 Heshpole (potato leaf)
- 1 Pruden's Purple (potato leaf)
- 1 Barlow Jap (potato leaf)
- 1 Brandywine Cowlick's (potato leaf)
- And I'm sure there are many others I can't think of, not to mention about 1/3 or more of my vines are just not mature enough to show the problem yet.

I've been monitoring my soil moisture level with a meter. I check my pH, and it's a good range (6.3-6.9). When I made/mixed the soil, I added things like greensand, compost, TomatoTone etc. to ensure it had all the micro/macro nutrients required. I fertilize with BioBiz Bio Grow and/or Neptune's Harvest Fish/Seaweed every week or so.

I don't think the problem matches any of the fungal or mold based foliar disease descriptions that I've researched online. Further, consider the extremely dry weather we have here.

I've posted a number of pictures from some of the above noted plant varieties. Note, I recently applied Diatomaceous Earth over the foliage, so ignore the white powder. I'd sure love to know if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions as to what this could be. If I can't learn this time around, I know I'm doomed to repeat another early demise of my prized tomato vines.

Thanks all.
-naysen