thrips

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Final Score: Thrips 7, Gardener 0

It’s the start of American football season, so please forgive the metaphor. As far as the Viburnum tinus is concerned, the score is not in my favor. It’s time to take one for the team. Though I feel personally defeated, it’s not all bleak. I don’t have a brain concussion from brutal tackles and I’m not benched for bad behavior.

It’s time to throw in the towel. Yet who wants to admit they’ve been bamboozled by a bug, tricked by a thrip, or outmaneuvered by aphids? Certainly not me.

I garden organically which means no pesticides or poisons. This limits my options, but I’m okay with that.

For the past seven years (yes years) I’ve been doing battle with thrips. Until last week, Viburnum Tinus filled the space between our home office window and the walkway to our deck. When healthy, it’s quite lovely. You can see the plants looking their best here. Shiny, dense green leaves give way to flowers and dark purple berries. It provided cover for the lizards and made a nice green hedge under the window.

row of viburnum titus

June, 2010

Yet year after year, the thrips return and the problem seems to get worse. This year they invited aphids to the party and things looked grim.

row-of-vibernum-titus

August, 2016

damage-old-and-new-growth

Leaves coated in sooty mold, a product of the “leavings” of insects. Also, possibly scale (dark red area)

vibernum-black-soot-damage

Please…invite your friends: scale and white fly

damage-spreading-to-nearby-plants

Damage spreading to the plant below.

By mid-summer, sticky, odoriferous goo covered the plants. Some years I give the plants a hard prune, but honestly, how much can you remove before the plant is bare? We ordered lacewing eggs one year, expecting them to hatch and eat the larvae of these pests. The smell goes away in the winter so we initially thought we had solved the problem.

I don’t know if the drought plays a role in this, but this past summer the smell was akin to…how do I say this nicely…vomit. It kept us from spending time on the deck and forced us to close the window at night. When the days cooled down and we wanted to let in the breeze, the pests tickled our nostrils with that nauseating smell.

planthopper

Planthopper, another garden pest. Several of them jumped out of the bushes while I pruned away the damaged leaves.

They had to go.

While I was away one day, my husband removed one of the five shrubs, leaving a gaping hole next to the deck. We “filled in the space” with our garden cart (how pretty) and the remaining shrubs sat there smelling up the place. Then we were in for another heat wave, and then I traveled, and you know how it goes.

But that smell.

Knowing I didn’t have the strength to remove the shrubs by myself, I did the next best thing: I pruned them down to the thickest branches, using the tools I have.

I’m reluctant to plant something new right away, but the space looks barren. I raked, swept, hand-picked and hopefully removed every last offensive, pest-covered leaf. While working away, I encountered a hopping green bug, sticky aphids, and other unidentified bugs.

white-bug-carcasses

Unknown: White fly or possibly the carcass of another insect

When I reached the last of the five shrubs, I  spotted a praying mantis. They’re fascinating creatures with rotating heads and stick like bodies.  They’re also good for the garden, munching on non-beneficial bugs. Clearly these shrubs were no match for a single bug, no matter how hungry.

After running inside for my camera and attempting some video, I removed his branch and carried him to another part of the garden. They will also eat small hummingbirds, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

Three hours later I had cleared the last of the shrubs, and I had the sore back to prove it. I was also racing the clock for the yard waste pick up. Once a week, on trash day, the garbage collector takes away yard waste. I certainly didn’t want any of those leaves living in my compost pile so off they went.

Short term, I hung a string of lights between a pair of gardening trellises. I don’t want anyone inadvertently stepping off the walkway ramp.

The final score is thrips, seven years and this gardener zero. Going forward, I plan to significantly improve the odds.

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Viburnum Tinus: Odoriferous With a Side of Thrips

A row of Viburnum Tinus grow below the window of our den. The plants fill the space nicely between the ramp to the deck and our house. It’s a good-looking shrub, producing pretty flowers and berries during the winter months.  But…that smell.

We naively thought the pungent smell was coming from under the house. I thought a small animal might have died in the crawl space. My husband thought a neighborhood cat was spraying and tried a deterrent in the immediate area. The smell was so overpowering when we opened our window in the spring that we started keeping it closed while we researched the cause.

Viburnum tinus

Viburnum tinus, early buds

Viburnum tinus, buds

Viburnum tinus, small buds look like stars and beads

Last summer we noticed the lower leaves were a grayish brown. Turns out we had thrips. Was that what caused the smell?  We ordered beneficial insects (the larvae eat the thrips), reassured that we had good insectary sunflowers nearby for the mature adults. Further, I heavily pruned the lower branches, cutting away as much damage as possible. I hauled all the underbrush away from the plants to allow air circulation.

I noticed today that the thrips are back (along with the tell-tale brown leaves) though the plant continues to grow, flower and fruit.  I did a little research, and it seems the smell and the thrips are exclusive. According to Plants For a Future  the tinus “plants give off an offensive smell in wet weather.” Several writers on the forums describe it as something a dog left.

That’s it! At long last we have our answer. Now what to do about that odoriferous smell?

Viburnum tinus

Viburnum tinus, opening blooms

Viburnum tinus

Viburnum tinus, flowering white

Viburnum tinus berries

Viburnum tinus berries (inedible)

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Thrips: It’s What’s For Breakfast!

The garden thrips are on notice! Lacewings are on the scene.

A small packet of lacewing eggs arrived yesterday by mail. The packet contained an unimpressive looking plastic bag that, to the naked eye, looked like a bag of sawdust. My eyes aren’t what they used to be so I examined the bag closely with my nifty light-up magnifying glass, a gift from Bruce and Shirley. Still no sign of those eggs. The instructions reassured me that the eggs were in there and would be “hatching any minute” if they hadn’t done so already. Well then, no time to waste!

After dinner, my husband watered the affected plants and the Magnolia tree and we set out the eggs. Seriously, it felt like a practical joke because I couldn’t see anything but the sawdust.

The instructions suggest stapling a paper cup to a tree leaf and filling it with some of the eggs.  That was the hardest part.  I’m clumsy, so trying to staple the bottom of a paper cup to a thin leaf at the top of a tree was…challenging. We scattered the rest of the eggs at the base of the plants.

Guess what? As of this morning, a few already hatched. The packet contained “1,000 eggs” though how you could have counted is anyone’s guess.  I hope the emerging larva are hungry.

We ordered our beneficial insects via the Internet from Orcon (Organic Control, Inc.) based in Los Angeles. If you live outside the states, search under “beneficial garden insects” for a source near you. Introducing the appropriate beneficial insect to your garden is safe for plants, people and pets, reducing the need for dangerous and toxic pesticides.

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And Then There Were Thrips

It’s been a month of pests for Gardening Nirvana as we’ve worked our way through aphids, scale and now thrips. Three different plants, three different pests, all living within a few feet of each other.

Foreground (emerging sunflowers); under window (Viburnum tinus), right of photo (scale-infected Magnolia)

Thrips now reside on the lower leaves of the Viburnum tinus immediately outside of our home office window.  It took us two summers to figure out what that…uh…pungent smell was.  We knew it was organic in nature, but it was so odoriferous, we assumed a small animal had died under the house or deck.  The smell eventually went away, the plants looked fine and we didn’t give it another thought.

Spring rolled around again, then summer and…that smell!  Aren’t you glad you are only reading about it?  The damage seemed to be happening at the base of the shrubs and along the back, making me wonder if it was lack of air circulation.  My husband’s sleuthing and a magnifying glass revealed that yes, we had a third infestation on our hands: thrips.

Plant Damage

Plant Damage

Thrips

Thrips

Through the wonder of the Internet and our postal service, a shipment of lacewing eggs, nested in bran, is headed for our front door.  When the tiny larvae emerge they feast on the thrips.  Adults need nectar and pollen to survive, so it’s important to have insectary plants in your garden to support the adult population.  The exciting news is that my sunflowers will flower within the next week or so, providing pollen to the emerging adults.  They like Cosmos and Sweet Alyssum, too, also growing our the garden.

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