SOIL Spider Mites Attack!!!

[RedGreenTomatoes]

At some point in the past two weeks, during the period of time I was dealing with personal issues and wasn't able to check on my plants everyday.. to returning back and this is what I found. Suddenly I found a spider web on some plants connecting to the wall back to the plant several inches away from each other, and I cleaned it up, it's not uncommon for me to deal with actual spiders and their webs inside as it's a part of living where I do, so I didn't think nothing about it. As I was doing my what would normally have been daily checks, suddenly I saw I had more webs on more plant leaves, then I found a couple more. My response could have been heard for miles NO!!!!

Like clockwork, we all know the next step I took.. I turned over the leaf in pure fear like I was in some horror movie and the killer was waiting on the other side of the door for me.. and the moment I saw it.. I stopped.. I looked on in sheer terror.. Please tell me what I'm seeing is a nightmare, that I'm about to wake up from in the next few minutes. Then I saw the black spot moving.. I saw the white larva moving and crawling.. OMG.. Please tell me this is not as bad as I think I'm seeing it to be.. and I flipped over another leaf and it was even worse than the first. I only see them on one plant of multiple plants, and I don't see any damage at all from them to the leaves yet, which is something I was expecting for what I was seeing.

I talked to some others and everyone laughed "Spider Mites, huh?.. You got them a couple of weeks ago, huh?" I don't know I haven't been around for the past couple of weeks and returned to find them suddenly, how did you know I got them in the past couple of weeks, nobody was supposed to know I was gone? That just got a chuckle out of them, because everyone got spider mites a couple of weeks ago, we were waiting to talk to you to say "hey you better check your plants, because if you somehow didn't get them, we were going to ask what you were doing different than us.. LOL".

So I'm including photos of what I suddenly found, and I'm starting off with Castile Soap in a spray and then I will follow up with A DE Duster tomorrow, and I'm going to attempt to eradicate them with a full out attack spread of both of those things and hopefully get a handle on my issue before it becomes any more of an issue. Hopefully sharing my personal experience on this matter will help others.

[Rwise]

Are these outside or inside? In veg many things can be used, spinosad would be my choice until they start to flower then I use ISO (1 part) with water (8 parts). In veg even neem oil can be used. I just sprayed a pepper plant with ISO and in 3 days will do so again and again in 3 more days as they have laid eggs that will hatch then watch closely for the return of the borg. (under side first then top side, pot soil walls everydamnthing) IF outside get lady bugs and turn them loose (I would still spray them until the lady's get there) Good luck!

[Phlash]

Good luck with ridding them, I’ve never had any real luck eradicating them once they establish to the point I see by your pics. The only suggestion I have besides ripping them out and burning, is trim as much foliage as possible especially anything infested, get their numbers knocked down, then follow up by introducing predatory mites. I’ve tried a lot of various products and methods but none have worked as well, it is become a staple in my IPM regiment.

[Sixwinds]

Sorry to hear, I'm also dealing with what I think are spider mites for the first time in years. I keep a clean grow room with restricted entry so I have no idea how they got in there this time. The first time I brought in a seedling from my neighbor that infected the entire room, never doing that again.

My approach is the nuclear option. When I spotted the mites I culled both the plant that had them, and another seedling I had growing. I have a 3rd plant that is at 8 weeks flower and I'm going to run her out to harvest. After she is done I'm going to deep clean the grow room with a strong pesticide - set off a bug bomb - and then follow up with Dr Zymes. Then the room sits empty for at least 14 days to make sure any stragglers don't find any plants to latch onto.

It's harsh, but the only way I've found that works with these fuckers.

Good luck.

[RedGreenTomatoes]

From the previous above comments I've decided to share my own personal routine based off from my own personal research of what I know and believe to be the facts and from previous experiences and conversations with other growers I know not everyone is going to agree with what I believe to know as facts here. First off when I have a problem, I have been around long enough that the internet forums wasn't always a thing you could rush to go find your answers from some keyboard warrior who knows everything. I had to actually get to the local public library and go to a card catalog and look up topics and books and then go on an endless hunt all around the library to find the books I was after, sit down at a table start reading them and then figure out which one were worth while checking out with my library card and only having a short period of time before I had to bring the books back or pay fines for being late. Perhaps it was that whole experience of the library and the hassles to be able to check out a book and having a short period of time to read it before you had to bring it back and let someone else check it out and go back on the waiting list to get it again, provided someone actually brought it back on time and wasn't incurring late fees for it. But overall all that work meant I choose good authors, factual books and I tried to get as much out of the reading experience as I could squeeze out of it.

My very first experience with spider mites is like most people's.. "What kills them" and when that didn't exactly work out as planned, obviously I went back to re-examine my approach, I found a book Marijuana Pests and it was written by Ed Rosenthal, who took the approach you need to first learn your enemy to truly understand how to make your battle plan against the enemy. If a solider goes to combat that's exactly what he does and seriously who's disagreeing that spider mites are not a very real hard to kill enemy worthy of your full time and attention to win that war? I learned spider mites are so small they can float in through the tiny holes of a standard house window screen, so much for my first layer of trying to keep them out. I thought a HEPA air filter would help against them, and I can't say it really doesn't, I just stopped doing it because the HEPA filters got to be to expensive to keep trying to use that as a layer of defense against them. I then went to using a MERV-13 filter, but try replacing them every 2-weeks.. and at longest 4-weeks.. sure they are cheaper then a HEPA filter but at what level do you truly want to fight against them and attempt to prevent them?

Then I learned they can ride in on your clothing, so I bought one of those cheap VEMON plastic suits they have cheap like fiber suit and one for chemicals that is like $10-20 for the two different types of suits, which is cheap enough to put on to go in my garden space and help attempt to prevent them. However right back to they can still hitch a ride on the suit, unless you are throwing them away after each use, and if you haven't ever been in one I don't expect you to understand what it means to be that warm in one, I wear very light clothes if I am going to wear the chemical one like when I am going in there to do a cleaning. They can also ride in on pets you have, so really at the end of the day prevention for me just seemed like no matter how hard I was trying to find to find a way of preventing them and never getting them, seemed right up there with the words of 'impossible' and 'dream'. I was right back at "know you enemy".

Well if you can't prevent them because of the fact they are going to find a way of hitching a ride in, my next mistake was thinking that because I live in a cold climate with extremely cold winters, that my spider mite issue could and would only be a spring/summer/fall problem.. but not a winter problem. WRONG! Turns out they go dormant and if you for example put plant pots outside in the snow and later take then back inside without bleaching and cleaning them first, I can tell you from personal experiences that they somehow go active within hours of coming in, because I've had them as soon as the next day. Since they are extremely dedicated to finding a way into your growing area, I have to be even more dedicated to taking steps to ensure that I'm willing to bring the war to them and be committed to the one and only answer of winning that war at all costs. Which brings me to the point of these long, lengthy steps and you can tell me how I don't need to do all of these things, but at the end of the day I've had and eradicated my spider mite problems more often than I have not, very few times have I had to kill my plants and wait two months, deep clean and start completely over again.

To start with I will move all my plants outside under black bags, sitting on black plastic because it's my way of doing it, and I don't use trash bags with a scent to them, made that mistake once.. YUK! Next get one my one-time use chemical suit while dressed for the warm temps inside of it, because it's going to be awhile. I start by taking everything apart, and I bag it in black bags, one item at a time like I'm at a crime scene, gently tie the bag closed, I'm not wasting good trash bags later on, and move everything to a staging area near to the area I'm planning on my 'cleaning staging area' which is going to be right next to it, because I want minimal space from them sitting there to me grabbing them and cleaning them later on. Once my entire room is stripped down to my Ocra lined walls, which are then tapped off to seal them closed, I'm not wasting CO2 and I really do try to minimize pests finding and easy way inside. I used to use Mylar, got tired of hot spots, tried Ocra and it's like a dream come true for me, and it holds up to bleach water mix when I scrub everything down.

Once the entire room is bare of absolutely everything I start with a good vacuuming put on the floor vacuum attachment on the shop vacuum and I pick a top ceiling corner and I start at one side corner and I start sucking an empty ceiling of imaginary dust as if the entire room is covered in it. I start North pulling South, then I go East to West, Then I go diagonal both directions, just because I want to know I didn't miss a thing, then I do the walls ceiling to floor, every single inch of the walls, corners and then I do the floor. Then I come in with my bleach water and I start at the ceiling washing everything down using a hand pump sprayer of 1-gallon and after I spray it down, I wipe it down with a clean rag, ceiling, change to a new rag, North wall, new rag, I can wash the rags later on not like I can't reuse them at a later point. I change rags because I want to know I'm not dragging anything from one wall to another wall along the way. By the time I'm done, I'm hot inside my suit and I am tired of smelling bleach.. so I go take off my suit switch to the white paper suit and change my buckets and rags over for water and white vinegar mixed. Vinegar is a great cleaning chemical for all kinds of stuff and I go back and start at the ceiling again, same process of wiping everything down, and I don't mind vinegar over bleach smell. By the time I'm coming back to put everything back together later on, there won't be any smell of anything left in the room beyond a fresh clean crisp smell of fresh air.

Once finished cleaning the room, I start taking things out of bags.. Rope ratchet hangers, I give them a good hand washing in a light beach solution, usually in a large storage tub, so I can set up my cleaning area anywhere I want to, and I prefer to keep mine just outside my growing area. So when I am done with everything I can clean the entire room where I stored and cleaned everything just encase spider mites found a way out of the bags. I wipe down everything with a wet rag, every inch of almost everything.. I wash or change the pre-filter to the carbon canister, I wipe down as much of the inline fan and the fan blades as I can. I take the covers off my circulation fans and I do my best to clean all the spaces they could hitch a ride and get blown back into the air after all my hard work. A bug bomb may seem easier, but if you read the directions on some of those they state to turn off the electricity when doing it because it can do some horrible things if it's give a source of ignition. Oh and it also says you need to wash everything and wash everything down when you are done. My solution is easier I found, I only bug bombed it when I very first started because everything was pest infested as it was empty for years and I wanted a clean start and was willing to put in the work after doing it.

When my room is put back together I will spray my plants with soapy water mix of Peppermint Castile Soap mix of 5-8 Tablespoons of liquid soap to low PPM water such as Distilled water. Hard water works against me is my understanding, so I make it as nasty for the bugs as I can. I have always had great results, Thus I soak them with a hand pump sprayer 1-gallon from the top to the bottom.. 3 separate times... in 3-rounds.. I do that to every single plant and then go to the next one and I spray it top to the bottom for an entire round, then back to the first plant and go for round-2. I wash the outside and underside of the pots with bleach, I am not going to give a spider mite a place to hide because I was to lazy to clean there. I will put the entire room back together until the last thing to go back inside there is the plants.

I will then follow up in another 24 hours with DE Dusting in a duster can, I'll wear my suit and a mask, go in there and dust that entire space, and then get out of there.. Go back the next day for soap.. then DE Dusting.. then I will space it off and treat for 1-2 weeks.. or as long as my plants can handle it up to the point of not longer than 2-weeks. After I'm sure my pest problem is 100% gone and I no longer need to worry, I will go in there with a bucket of water with some vinegar because it's a great cleaning chemical and the high pH swing of using it in Distilled water just gives me more reason to believe I'll mess up any chance of any surviving eggs or mites by this point. Then all I do is wash everything down with a rag, and try to clean up as much of my DE dust as I can by wetting it while I'm masked for the process. Sure its a lot of work, a pain in the backside, but I rarely get pests while others I know get them much more often they I do. Hence why my friends wanted to see if I managed to avoid them and if so know what was I doing different? Because I've given up trying to prevent them, and gone to a more of all out attack and winning the war when I do get them.

I'm not afraid to do the clear tape rolling of the leaves to sticky the pests as well, I just didn't claim that I do it, because while it does get done, I'm not the individual who is doing it while I am doing my other tasks I was busy outlining. I've tried finding a way of vacuuming the plant as others have suggested in things I've read, despite buying the cheapest, smallest shop vacuum and even trying house vacuums I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I was not pleased with the results. Or should I say I felt extreme results I think my plants would have faired better through a Cat-5 hurricane and looked better for it. I do turn down my lighting power during the time I am treating my plants as to lessen the stress on them and give the soap more time to work at drying them out along with the DE dust. Later I do wash the plants off with plenty of water sprayings from a pump sprayer as I do it to help maintain my humidity levels as I suffer from fighting heat issues do to my walls being lined in Ocra and I have to fight to cool things.

Something else to note, spider mites thrive in HOT & HUMID CONDITIONS.. If my friends were right about the spider mite infestation truly hitting everyone right at the same time, they were betting on it because of our current temps in that period where perfect for them to just become the new things you were going to get like it or not. Combined with my growing area conditions of being hot and humid because of other actions I take, put me as the perfect person among us to really get a super big problem on an escalated timeline. Hence my explosion of spider mites and my lack of leaf damage because they haven't been there long enough, but had enough time to explode their population because of my environmental condition's. I believe now would be the time to turn on that MERV-13 filter and maybe my HEPA Filter system, now would be the time to make running those filters worth every penny they cost to replace.

Another plus is by lowering my lighting.. I will lower my humidity levels and my temps as well.. I will make my environment just as unpleasant for them as I can. The only times I've ever had to scrap everything and completely start over after 2-months of waiting with no plants at all and then a deep cleaning to ensure my spider mites were gone. I suddenly found it 10-times easier to be thoroughly attacking them at the onset, and ensuring that where ever they managed to get inside that room is going to be a quick death for them. I know some people don't even try to do anything more than just control them and accept them as a part of the growing experience. For me I personally feel it's a worth while pain to put in lots of work, very little in chemicals, and come out with a clean environment for it. If I can prevent other pests in the process, gives me a chance to deep clean everything, look at bulbs and cords, and go over every inch of everything and see if everything is in good order, I enjoy the extra time out there spending that time ensuring things are going according to plan. Like I said I don't expect anyone to agree with me, it's just my process and it works well for me.

[SoOrbudgal]

Good luck

[No3odiesShad0w]

I wish you the best of luck. When I had spider mites, I lost my whole crop. Everything was in flower when I noticed so I couldn't really spray or do anything effective. I had success with neem oil and diatomaceous earth on young plants. Just a crappy pest to have.