Thrips Worms on Your Cannabis Plant?

Have you noticed a tiny bug on your plants that looks like worm? If yes! Then probably thrips have invaded your garden. Thrips are terrible tiny fast-moving and growing insect that comes in different forms, depending on their stages in life and the ecosystem. Thrips are slender sucking insects that causes damage to your cannabis plant and transfer plant diseases. Thrips can infest your plant both indoors and outdoors by sucking out the juices from the buds and leaves, leaving shiny silver spot on the cannabis leave. The spot grows bigger and wither the plant untimely.

At the nymph stage, thrips looks like pale worm and can be measured in millimeter, however growth turns them to a tiny winged insect at adult stage. Cannabis Thrips are black, brown or yellow colors at adult stage and green or yellow at the larval stages. Although, thrips attack many crops but cannabis and cotton farmers are the major victims of attack. The most common species thrips on cannabis is “Frankliniella Occidentalis”, commonly known as Tobbaco Thrips,

 

Are thrips harmful?

Thrips are harmful yet not harmful on the other hand. There are thousands of species of thrip; while some damage your plant and destroy on your garden, others are beneficial as their own food is majorly other insect. The beneficial species can be used as control against other pest but due to identification issues, gardeners always opt to eradicate all at once to protect their plants. Thrips are extremely active and attacks in convo, easily disturbed and controlled.

 

Prevention and Control

Preventions

Inspect Imported plants – your garden can be exposed to thrip infestation in as much they’re present on a plant. Thrip spread rapidly, so always inspect your new plants before introducing them into your garden. A perfect way to achieve this is to isolate new plants for 1-2 weeks and notice any pest development.

Set a Trap – to reduce thrip populations, sticky traps are good option here. Adult thrips tend to fly with their little wing and are liable to fall into the trap reducing their population and reproduction rate.

 

Environmental Control

Clean Up Debris – Host plant leaves can hold this pest for long even after harvest. Therefore, remove all weeds, use dry mulch and clean all crop debris after harvest to eradicate thrip totally.

Introduce Predators – this are beneficial insects that feast on thrips. Ladybugs, spider mite, lacewings are perfect predators that can help here.

 

Organic Control

Soapy water – insecticidal soap is good but sometimes have residue on plant. So, it’s advisable you mix with water to flush your plant to reduce follow-up or aftermath inspection. Soapy water weakens the thrip and they tend to fall off your leaf in few moments.

Neem oil – You need to be careful using neem as it can be harmful to human. Neem is all round natural remedy to dealing with pests, just get a sprayer to maximize your use and result.

Spinosad Product – quite different from neem, its harmless to human and pets. You can spray excessively on you plant with no side effect. You can mix Spinosad to your water while wetting or spray directly on thrips. Spinosad is exquisite and tested effective on other pests.

Pyrethrins – usually recommended due to its harmless and ecofriendly nature. Once spray on the leaves, it degrades quickly without residue on plants. Pyrethrins are best to use at evening as they are toxic to bees.