Black tiny 'dots' on Thai Basil

9 years ago

I have some Thai basil in my new hydroponic fog system. The basil is from a Thai grocery shop which sells cut fresh basil by the pound. I just get it rooted and put them in the fog box.

So far it works very very well. The box is outside on my balcony and has rain cover. It get's full sun, and boy, it is HOT these days.

Some leaves on some plants have these microscopic black round balls on the leaves. They seem to fall off. I wonder what that is? It seems to affect only the Thai basil, the Italian basil looks so far OK.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (7)

blattlaus
Original Author
9 years ago
Another images. It's about the best my Nexus 5 can manage.

What is that?

Well, after more on Google I found the answer: It's Shore Fly droppings. I put up some yellow sticky traps that I bought from China. I will report if that helps.

This post was edited by blattlaus on Sun, Jun 1, 14 at 0:16
lkzz
9 years ago
Ha! I thought it looked like insect poop!

Hope you can get it under control.
blattlaus
Original Author
9 years ago
Well, maybe the basil from the Thai grocery was already contaminated. A few more problem, or maybe it's all related.

A caterpillar.....
blattlaus
Original Author
9 years ago
...and something that looks like a spiderweb. Probably related to the caterpillar.

On a positive note, the yellow sticky traps had a few flies. The blue trap got nothing.
blattlaus
Original Author
9 years ago
Update: The problem got greatly reduced with the sticky yellow trap. On a side note, there is also no leaveminer problem with my soil based tomatoes. Before that was a problem too.

The blue traps didn't caught anything though. Go for yellow!

You can buy the traps on ebay, search for "sticky yellow traps"
jean001a
9 years ago
The little black things aren't from flies. They're frass -- poop -- from caterpillars.
blattlaus
Original Author
9 years ago
Yep, that's most likely caterpillar-shite. I wonder what insect lays the eggs then. Maybe that fly in the picture?

I see those often on the basil. That pix is from a tomato though, which are so far totally pest free (makes me wonder if you can plant basil as bait plant with your tomato to attract the bugs. I also use the yellow sticky traps which work well)