Insecticide For Aphids And Thrips

Aphids and thrips are small enough that you may not notice an invasion until their feeding visibly damages your plant’s health. Aphids — tiny, pear-shaped insects of nearly any color — latch onto stems and leaves and drink the plant’s sap through sharp, hollow mouth parts. Most aphids in warm climates give birth to live young, and many of them reproduce year-round. Their classic calling card is honeydew, the sticky leftovers of their feeding. Slender, winged yellowish to black thrips puncture plant tissue and devour its cellular contents, including chlorophyll. Pale stippling or silvering and specks of dark excrement mark their feeding sites. Wind carries thrips from plant to plant.

Green lacewing larvae prey on aphids and thrips, and inviting these beneficial bugs to your garden helps keep both pests in check. Each female lacewing lays hundreds of eggs, and each larva consumes up to 600 thrips or aphids a day for two to three weeks before pupating. Adult green lacewings feed on nectar and pollen from flat, shallow-throated flowers. Lure the adults by scattering annual sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) and cosmos (Cosmos spp.) around the garden, and let their babies go to work.

Spraying your outdoor plants with water from the hose dislodges and drowns aphids and thrips. Aim at the leaf undersides where the insects congregate. To remove thrips, set your hose’s spray attachment on fine and spray early in the morning, when the hose water is cold and the lethargic insects aren’t likely to fly away. Getting rid of thrips requires three or more treatments spaced every one or two days. This technique also works with aphid-infested indoor plants, because aphids are stationary. Simply take the plants outside or place them in a sink or shower for spraying.

Nontoxic, ready-to-use insecticidal soap controls aphids and thrips on garden and indoor plants. It suffocates the bugs it reaches, so direct the spray at the backs of the leaves, the stems, leaf and flower buds and shoot tips where the pests gather. Treat them when no honeybees, lacewings or other beneficials are present, and when no direct sun will hit and possibly damage the plants. To eliminate the pests, you need to spray the plants until they drip and repeat the spraying every two to three days, or at the label’s suggested interval. As a precaution, wear gloves, a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, socks, shoes, protective eyewear and a respiratory mask when spraying. Always apply the soap according to the label’s directions.