The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have what I think are thrip nymphs/larvae, visible with a handheld 10-15x LED microscope.  They are torpedo shaped, translucent enough so that you can watch their excrement go from inside to outside, dropping as lines of small dark green blobs.  They are on my seedling vegetable plants in an indoor growing area and are hard to find because there aren't that many of them compared to the number of lesions (and blobs) they create.  I'll occasionally  spot one or two in an area where there are lots of the dark green excrement blobs.  They are in the same size range as spider mites, but move around a lot more than the spider mites and are no where near as numerous.  I've never seen their eggs or an adult thrip.  Does it sound like these are thrip larvae?  I've looked them up and some photos seem to confirm this.

I've been spraying them with Safer's Soap and that seems to work...but they keep coming back. Would Safer's Soap act as a safe surfactant if I mixed it with fertilizer to use in the soil as mentioned? 

Pagnr, could you tell me which spray nozzle you've found most useful for reaching the underside of leaves?

kumin, thanks for the descriptions.  Since I haven't achieved much success with citrus grafting, they are very useful.  When I used to buy budwood from the UCR(UC Riverside) collection (before they doubled their already high price), much of it came as very angular wood and I always wondered if that was contributing to my lack of success.

Not having access to budwood, but having a number of young citrus in containers (and a few older in ground), I've been cutting buds from the middle of live branches where the small branch is at least round.  No success yet and I don't know if this is because my designated trees don't seem to have slipping bark, or the buds are small, or because it's a bad way to collect buds.  Do you have any thoughts about this?

"Were they selling fertilizer?"

That was the first thing that popped into my mind.  Wouldn't they love having customers coming in and ordering 5 different brands of fertilizers each time.

What's the shipping cost for 10 seeds to 90290?

John

Have you tried to contact Four Winds, they should be interested since it's one of their trees.

To check for spider mites, handheld pocket microscopes are invaluable.  Here are two that I use, they are about 10-16x magnification (ignore the 60x claims), which is just right...you can see the spider mites waving their arms about, you can see the nymphs, the eggs, even the occasional thrip.  You can also put a sheet of white paper under a leaf (spider mites are mostly on the underside), tap on the top of the leaves and look to see if you get a bunch of black specks, some moving.  I run my finger over the specks and if I see a streak of blood I know it wasn't a piece of dust.

https://www.amazon.com/Carson-MicroMini-Lighted-Microscope-Flashlight/dp/B015MS3ICQ/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=led+handheld+pocket+microscope&qid=1608084041&sr=8-10

https://www.amazon.com/Microscope-Magnifying-Jewelry-Magnifier-Handheld/dp/B07WLCF4VT/ref=sr_1_31?dchild=1&keywords=led+handheld+pocket+microscope&qid=1608084041&sr=8-31

Thanks for this link.  I found the original paper and it shows how they made the oak leaf extract and how they applied it.  It's looks pretty easy, although their lab had a machine that shook the mixture vigorously overnight at a certain temperature.  So your oak leaf tea may need a little modification.

How would you compare the taste of Bacon, and Reed, to that of Fuerte?

I've been using EB Stone pumice and the size varies between 1/8" and 1/2", but a lot of it is 3/8" and 1/2".  Do you think that's too large for soil mixes?

John

I was reading an article on an Australian fruit site where they were discussing dealing with a citrus gall wasp problem they have over there.  One of the treatments they tried was spraying Surround on some of 10 young trees in an experiment.  And they  noticed that none of the trees sprayed with Surround has any sign of CLM, although other adjacent trees had plenty of it. 

I'm going to try this if I can find a source of Surround in small quantity, a pound or less.  Has anyone tried this, and does anyone know where to buy Surround in small size bags?

I've been dealing with spider mites on vegetable plants for years, fortunately not yet on my citrus.  But you guys seem to be guessing about the spider mites and the effect of the various treatments.  By the time you see webbing, you usually have a huge population of spider mites and their eggs.  By the time the leaves are all stippled, you have many many spider mites.

Here's an easy way to know exactly if you have spider mites and how many are left after you've soaked yourself trying to wash them off the trees (where do they go when they are washed off, and are the eggs also washed off?):

Try a hand held microscope, somewhere between 10x and 20x.  Here are links to the two kinds I've been using for about 5 years.  They work really well.  The first one isn't anywhere near the advertised 60x, but it gets you close enough to count the eggs, see the really young spider mites, watch them all wiggling their feelers/whiskers/front legs as they suck the life out of the plant.  The second one is a little less powerful than the first, but has a larger field of view and is better made.

https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Room-Microscope-Handheld-Magnifier/dp/B01D96ERFU/ref=sr_1_10?crid=33BCDG8EL033Z&keywords=hand+held+microscope+with+light&qid=1569298048&s=gateway&sprefix=hand+held+microscope%2Caps%2C536&sr=8-10

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015VGEBS4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Myself,  I don't use pesticides, so I'm stuck with Safer Soap which kills them dead but you have to be very persistent since the eggs will keep hatching if you don't come back every 3 or 4 days.  I'm also experimenting with a handheld vacuum cleaner, trying to find a way to do it without damaging the leaves. Citrus leaves are much tougher than vegetable leaves, so vacuuming might be easier to use on Citrus.

Would horticultural oil work as well as the neem oil?  Or does the neem oil have a repellent component?

I do have some 100% neem oil but it's at least 5 years old, and I don't know if it's still good to use.  And I just bought horticultural oil (Bonide).  I've also read that when you mix a batch of neem oil it's only good for about 6 hours, though I'm not sure why. 

Ilya,

Do you know how that pine bark compost is made...and if it's mixed with anything else.  i make my potting soil mix with what's called Groundcover Bark, which are small pieces of bark usually pine or fir, and compost, and about 1/3rd peat moss.  It provides more air space than peat moss would.  The question is how much it has to be composted.  I've been using it straight out of the bag for my potting soil mix.

If you know the brand name I might be able to look it up, depending on which language the information is in. 

John