Just spotted a few speckly leaves in my flowering room, turned the leaves upside down, low and behold, about a dozen or so spider mites, and what l;ook to be eggs. They are two and half weeks in, mix of Alaskan Ice and Super Lemon Haze.

Now, i'm struggling a bit for the old neem oil til the weekend. Is there anything useful round the house I could start the ball rolling with.

I have lots of spices, herbs etc, and I did read they don't like cayenne pepper.

I've already given them a good drenching in sea-weed to try and hold them back, but don't wanna go to silly coz of /rh at this time of day (lights out in an hour).

Any offers, much appreciated.

Scotts bug clear and horticultural soap got shut of them for me, I gave them 3 treatments to totally eradicate them. If you don't treat them immediately they will infest your whole harvest and it will be useless, hit em hard, hit em fast. Knowledge base will be your best friend here if you want more info or wait for more members to post.

Peace,
GG

Nice one GG

Does that contain Dicofol do you know. I just want a one hit wonder preferably, as I don't wanna be spraying them once the buds start coming thick and fast. Currently, the plants are just budding, popcorn size ones, so I wanna hit em hard and early.

Torque is the only thing I have ever used that was also an ovicide, it is not normally for sale to the public and needs great precautions when usin, nasty stuff. All other potions I know of kill Spider Mites, but not the eggs, so they are not "one hit wonders" and must be applied every 4 days of more hatch, breed, lay eggs...


CO2 fire extinguishers work well enough for severe infestations, just do not freeze the plants...

This forum is hectic, so here i share something that helped me just the other day.

Mites are a pain, and i would like to come back in my next life is a lady bug, but until then I use household peppers to kill the mites and it works.
I am not to sure on the measurements, but the spiciest and hotter the better.

2 x table spoons garlic
4 x chillies and pips
1 teaspoon caynenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
Blend this in with 1 part water

Strain through some cheese cloth or your girlfriends pantyhose. Keep this as your concentrate. Mix in some need oil and a drop of organic dishwashing liquid. Add about a teaspoon of this to 500ml water, mix it up and as they all say test on a few plants. But being organic I just go for it, before they can lay one more egg. Also a good suggestion is to wash each heavily infected leaf with a sterile cloth. GL and hope the little pests DIE.

Cheers for the help guys.

Managed to get hold of a bottle of SMC from my bro-in-law, so i've drowned my vegging room as there was also a few in there.

I'll be on it at 8am tomorrow inthe flowering room.

The SMC works very well, killed all that have been sprayed thus far. Noticed quite a few eggs though, so i'll have to keep on top of them for a week or two. Little mother fuckers. At least i'm getting some satisfaction killing the little pricks tho.

Found a few small spiders round the house too, chucked them on the plants for good measure. Not sure if the SMC will kill them tho, but if not, free food can't be bad for the little buggers.

Goddam insects. First infestation i've had since starting growing 18 months ago. I suppose it was inevitable at some point. Irony is, it's my first grow in my new house

Got sopme sterilising to do in 6 weeks. Bah!

There is no one hit wonder for s/m problems, not to the public any way, what I said above is the only thing that worked for me and is readily available.

Peace,
GG

18 months is good going. Glad you have found something that works. Forgot to mention, I used diatomaceous earth to for the mites, it works wonders if you can find it, just paint it on to the leaves most infected and drop some in the soil. Kill the buggers. Cheers.

SMC done feck all in my experince, if it did anything it kept numbers down but very minimal. Have you just sprayed the veg room 15mins ago? ..if so it doesnt kill off the borg that quick I think you will have to give them a spray every 3 days for 2 weeks or so; To make sure the eggs which have not hatched get the treatment too..

I would not recommend SMC, i think that could of been the culprit to 8 newly rooted clones deaths, which has now fecked up the xmas crop ..On the other hand, i have just pretty much got rid of my spidermites with Ivermectin (Harka Mectin One spot application for birds, available from most larger pet stores) and the help of Felix's thread.. ..Go to page 5.

Good luck fella.

Got hold of the SMC around 8.30, and applied it straight away. They were dead after about an hour or so.

Seems to have done the job. Just been and checked again, and there's no movement at all, so their either very dead, or very asleep

I'll spray them again at midnight, and first thing in the morning, then give em a day or two and observe. I will be fetching some neem oil, and some bug killer tomorrow to make double sure.

That SMC smells really nice tho

Yup.
Scotts Bug Clear or Westland Bug attack will both do the trick and pretty quickly as well.




Sorry. I don't see that as a 'total kill' treatment.
If you are in veg or early flower, which you need to be if you are spraying. Then you have to get rid of the mites totally. If you don't then they will come back to bite you on the arse when you are 6 weeks into flower.
You can't paint diatomaceous earth onto a plant carrying 6 weeks worth of bud.

Only had them once many years ago, pesky lil critters. I asked my cousin who's a qualified horticulturist.

He told me just put a teeny tiny bit of washing up liquid in some water and spray all over. The idea being turning those leafs into an ice rink and they simply slip away.

And thats exactly what happened!
Never came back either, touch wood they never do.

Although i think i was lucky as a good pal had them and did the same thing but they came back a couple of weeks later.

Good luck with it

HLT

I thought that it interfered with their respiration.

Thats possible, maybe why my cousin was very insistent on using a very very small amount, at the time i was a bit chicken doing it, saying i cant put that shit on my babies, and asked him to come and mix it up, that way if it went tits up i could blame him

Well like i said b4 it worked an absolute treat and they never came back. She was healthy all the way through to harvest after that and gave me 3 + ounces, which i was quite pleased with considering it was a random bag seed from long ago.


HLT

i use SBPI and Derris liquid for sm control, sbpi can be used all the way through flower

spray safe worked for me! i put it on three times, every 3 days did the job but i hit it from the start and also killing by hand but i only had about 5 plants

coolbeans H&D

Spraying the plants with washing up liquid and water is meant to act like horticultural soap and suffocate the spider mites, that is why we leave them in 24 hour darkness after treatment, so it does not dry off before t has suffocated the s/m. It has nothing to do with making the leaf surface slippery, some people hose them off but that is with a powerful hose pipe with pressurised water from the mains supply and it's the power of the water pressure that removes them, not the washing up liquid making them slip over and fall off.

Peace,
GG

Oh, i kind of liked the idea of them falling over and slipping off I could just imagine them going ohhhh shit!!!!!!!

Suffocate you say, ill have to remember that and tell my cousin what was he going on about. Maybe he was just having a laugh, but, he's well known for only telling half a story tbh.

Never the less it worked anyway.

But thanks for the correction anyhoo



:lucky:HLT

washing up liquid is a cheap alternative to horticultural soap, you use them primarly as a wetting agent... try spraying plain water on a leaf ... watch the droplets roll off......... add HS or Fairy, shake, spray again... dramatic difference... the whole leaf becomes wet.. no big droplets rolling around a largely dry leaf.

This ensures 100% coverage, without it you are pi$$ing into the wind doing anything against SM.

Soaps also dessicate Spider Mite when they dry, killing loads of adults, but not eggs. Within 10 minutes I see it here and get them out in the sun half an hour later, no problems.

Spraying also plain old fashioned washes many of the sods off, drowning them, before the soap can dessicate them by drying, some may survive the floods, get washed off, then get dessicated, again the wetting agent ensures a 100% spread, drowning far more.


Understand their life cycle, cold sends them dormant, turning a garden off for a few months does little, leaving a light on will hatch them all, with fans off they fry, and die... with a new crop in, they infest it real quick.....

Well, pleased to say it's worked a treat so far.

I've done two different applications, one with SMC, which I rate very highly truth be told, and secondly with fairy water. The leaves have a coating of SMC on anyway, and the second with the fairy is coz I ran out of SMC

Anyhoo, had a good sniff round, and there's no movement at all. When I spotted them yesterday originally, it was like watching the streets of New York from 10000 ft. Teaming with movement, and they were all busying aroung.

Just hope the SMC does what it says, and also coats the eggs, and suffocates the wee nippers too. I'll be keeping a close eye for the next few days to make sure.

So, +1 to soapy water & SMC from me.

Peace all, happy growing.

PS. Whats best to sanitise the room after harvest?

How do the little fuckers react to ozone?

Ive been batling the bastard borg since last summer with various treatments
and varying success...The SB plant invigerator prob worked the best..but never
completley......But now Id really like to Big Up my new best friends..............
....................Photoseiulus Persimilis......natural preds. Apparantly they can
consume 5-10 mites/eggs a day each...you get a thousand of the good guys
delivered fresh that morning to the G shop they come in a larger bottle than you'd
expect suspended in what i think was tiny chips of silicon,like sand.....I used them right at
the end of veg so i could have the extra light/heat...doesnt work so well 12/12....
...........I rigged a network of string tied to and criss crossing my plants and all ending
up in dish,poured the majority in here and spread the rest about as well as poss....and then
just let it run for another week 20/4 then used the SB again.....and so far ....4-5 wks
into 12/12 all is clear and present crop is looking splendid...................Peace............M..

i used bug clear on my plant 5 days ago, i can still see some tho, gonna give another treatment at 10days, also my plant is in its 3rd week of flower. How much do u dilute to mate, i use 10ml to 1L of water, also how long did u give b4 re applying spray?

they come from teh depths of hell lemur! the devils lil workers

i know man mine is in flower :-( i am going to be flowering it for 70 days so bug clear should b kk ^_^ i think they can come from carpet/beds/ just around the house hold i have heard, they love it in the enviroment inside ya grow room and thats where they thrive, they can get in through passives, zip stictings, they are very resourceful

on your clothes, dirty pots, in the compost, their eggs lay dormant for ages until they get the right conditions like your grow room then they hatch out, and making sure you clean your pots out properly with a very weak bleach solution and/or your grow room between grows will keep them down if your infected

i use Derris liquid and SBPI but not one will kill them all, i find it works best if you alternate them as it seems to keep them to a minimum, atm i've no sign at all

Spider mites can live anywhere in a dormant state, as said above. Apparently they love floorboards as hiding places, so if you have a bare wood floor in the room, that doesn't help none.

I suspect mine either came from a cutting i'm nursing for a friend, or I have inadvertently bought them in from outside on my clothes after walking the mutts, and just not thought of changing before looking in on the ladies (the veg room is my bedroom wardrobe )

In hindsight, i've probably caused it through bad hygiene, but lessons learnt. I've suddenly become slightly anal about it ::

I also strimmed my back garden last week, so potentially, they'd of been flying round in the air like a battalion of Luftwaffe, after the strimmer wire sent them orbital. I wouldn't be surprised it it fired them in the direction of the room, and they made their own way in from there.

Well day 3, and still no movement. Gonna give them another soapy blast shortly, and then see what it's like a bit later. So far so good though

Just to update this thread, my mites appear to be gone. Nothing has been done, other than regular spraying with fairy and water.

I did get some bug clear yesterday for added insurance, but after going through all my 26 plants (seedlings, veg and flower) I can't see a single trace of movement. Still a few eggs about, but after reading up on the little critters, it's looking unlikely they will hatch now. 10 days since I first sprayed them.

Last step will be to get some natural preds, and let them loose in the room just after cropping. That should clear any last trace. Then a thorough sterilising after that.

So a big thanks to everyone who chipped in advice. You're a great bunch.

Peace all, happy toking