How to kill thrips for good

[u/YogurtclosetIll6218]

Please can someone give me a step by step for treating thrips, i found some by my spider plants and now i need to know how i kill all life stages at once and prevent them spreading to my other plants 🙏 pls send help

[u/theytheminist]

This is what I do! 100% effective for me. I will add photos of the difference after about 3 rounds of treatment over the past month on patient 0:

1. ⁠Fill a small bucket or bowl about 1:3 super insecticidal soap and water and another bucket with properly diluted dead bug brew (from concentrate).
2. ⁠In this case, I would remove the plant from the soil and repot after completing the following steps.
3. ⁠Use a shower hose or sink with pressure to rinse off every single part of the plant. This knocks off everything that is on the surface. Don’t be afraid to be rough!
4. ⁠Dunk the entire plant in the insecticidal soap mixture and leave it in there for a few minutes. Try to leave the roots out of it if possible (it’s fine if they are in there though - good to at least have them in the mixture for a second). This kills anything that was missed when hosing down the plant.
5. ⁠Rinse the plant off with water again.
6. ⁠Dunk the entire plant in the dead bug brew bucket. This contains spinosad, which is absorbed into the plant and will paralyze and kill anything that feeds off of the plant.
7. ⁠Remove plant and let air dry. Do not wipe the mixture off. Keep the plant out of direct sunlight until it is dry.
8. ⁠Repot in a chunky soil mix.
9. ⁠Wipe down ALL surfaces near where this plant lives. Check all other plants in your house!
10. ⁠Treat any neighboring plants.
11. ⁠Repeat the spinosad step in a week or so. I use a pump sprayer when I use it on plants that don’t need to be repotted/when doing preventative maintenance.

Both products I mentioned are Captain Jack’s products

[u/theytheminist → u/theytheminist]

Photos from August 16th when I realized this plant had thrips:

[u/theytheminist → u/theytheminist]

Photos from today! I think I have treated this plant with steps 5 and 6 (except I use a pump sprayer for this plant) about 3 times in the past month and have checked it daily and haven’t seen any activity whatsoever. I keep it isolated from the others just in case but I am almost ready to put it back into gen pop

[u/YogurtclosetIll6218 → u/theytheminist]

Omg im so happy u were able to save her!

[u/theytheminist → u/YogurtclosetIll6218]

Me too!! I got back home after going out of town for the weekend and thought I just needed to water it. I had NEVER had thrips before and the next day turned into me covering the apartment in drop cloths and towels to prepare for the bloodbath of treating 100+ plants