How to Control Onion Thrips Organically

Growing and consuming products that originate from an organic garden is healthy for you and safe for the environment. A big challenge of growing produce organically is controlling the parasitic threats. Thrips are challenging to control, but if you remain patient you can save your garden.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Use yellow sticky traps along the edges of the field or garden to monitor the activity of onion thrips. These traps will give you a gauge on the infestation level so you can do something before it gets out of control.

2. Clean all unnecessary plant and garden debris away from the plants in the garden. This excess debris can allow the onion thrip cover to thrive if you do not keep the area neat and tidy.

3. Plant sweet Spanish onion plants and stay away from red onions if possible. Sweet Spanish onion plants are particularly resistant to an onion thrip infestation, whereas the red onion plant is very vulnerable.

4. Rotate the crops you plant each season. If there are no onion plants for a certain period, the onion thrip will move on or die off.

5. Place the grow area of younger fields or gardens upwind. The onion thrips cannot fly well into the wind, so they will have a hard time infesting new upwind fields.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid planting during the dry season. Onion thrips thrive in hot, dry conditions and perish in wet seasonal conditions. If you can time the planting correctly to take advantage of this, you can control onion thrips naturally.