Jack in the Bud
Active Member
Thrips.... Two grows back I had my first experience with thrips. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the grow (plus I didn't know what damage from them looked like) and they got pretty well established before I got it figured out. They leave odd shaped white spots and trails on the leaf surfaces. With a 10x magnifier you can see black, pin point spots with in and around these white areas (their poo).
The thrips themselves are smaller than fungus gnats and dam near impossible to see with the un aided eye. So now any time I notice any silvery white spots or trails on leaf surfaces I get the 10x out and investigate closely. With 10x you can see the thrips themselves crawling around. I managed to get one killed and isolated to where I could cut that piece of leaf off and then look at it under my 60 to 100x scope.
I did quite a bit of on line research into them and discovered that there are numerous sub-species of them. From my reading and looking at the micro-photography pictues I found on line I believe what I had were avacado thrips. One of the contributing factors in my coming to this conclusion was that at the time I had been buying and bringing home avacados from WallyMart. Plus it was January and the out door temps where I live were seriously sub-zero at the time so I was pretty sure I hadn't brought them in from my local out door enviroment.
The lesson here is that you have to be dam careful about what you bring into your house. Any thing from produce you bring home from the grocery store, flowers from the florist to regular house plants you buy (or have others give you) can act as a vector to introduce harmful insects (or disease) in to your MJ grow.
I've made it a habit to do all my plant tending early in the morning while I'm still wearing the sweats I lounge around the house in (that never get worn out side the house). In other words, if you've just come home from the grocery store and put your fruit and veggie purchases a way (or been out side cutting grass or tending your out door garden, flower or herb beds in the summer) you don't wear those clothes (or shoes) into your grow space. I guess if you wanted to get overly paranoid about the whole thing optimally what you would do is shower first and then do your indoor MJ garden tending naked.
Jack
The thrips themselves are smaller than fungus gnats and dam near impossible to see with the un aided eye. So now any time I notice any silvery white spots or trails on leaf surfaces I get the 10x out and investigate closely. With 10x you can see the thrips themselves crawling around. I managed to get one killed and isolated to where I could cut that piece of leaf off and then look at it under my 60 to 100x scope.
![garden 007a.jpg](/data/attachments/879/879081-ae20872eb5b359ff7d4c40f5638876bd.jpg)
I did quite a bit of on line research into them and discovered that there are numerous sub-species of them. From my reading and looking at the micro-photography pictues I found on line I believe what I had were avacado thrips. One of the contributing factors in my coming to this conclusion was that at the time I had been buying and bringing home avacados from WallyMart. Plus it was January and the out door temps where I live were seriously sub-zero at the time so I was pretty sure I hadn't brought them in from my local out door enviroment.
The lesson here is that you have to be dam careful about what you bring into your house. Any thing from produce you bring home from the grocery store, flowers from the florist to regular house plants you buy (or have others give you) can act as a vector to introduce harmful insects (or disease) in to your MJ grow.
I've made it a habit to do all my plant tending early in the morning while I'm still wearing the sweats I lounge around the house in (that never get worn out side the house). In other words, if you've just come home from the grocery store and put your fruit and veggie purchases a way (or been out side cutting grass or tending your out door garden, flower or herb beds in the summer) you don't wear those clothes (or shoes) into your grow space. I guess if you wanted to get overly paranoid about the whole thing optimally what you would do is shower first and then do your indoor MJ garden tending naked.
Jack