One thing I am not thankful for...

You guessed it....SPIDER MITES!!!!

I thought I would share my plan for getting rid of them and share my results.

BACKGROUND:
I had a bout with mites on my first ever grow this summer. I had to hide the plants outside for an hour during the annual inspection of our apartments. A few days later, spider mites were everywhere. My solution was to keep the lights on at night and import air from outside to keep my grow cabinet cool. I also sprayed the plants with cold water as often as I could. It seemed to work well enough.

This time around, it was a clone that I brought in that introduced these fuckers. In hindsight, I can't believe I let it happen because the clone had all the telltale signs of yellow dots and whatnot. I inspected it closer a few days ago and was astonished to see more mites than I have ever seen before. So many that they were even on the tops of the leaves ansd visible without the loupe. I immediately isolated it in an outdoor closet, thinking the 45 degree air with near 100% rH would get rid of them. I took a look today and only a very slight improvement. I checked the other 5 plants still in my grow cabinet that I started from seed. Despite looking healthy all around, the loupe revealed there were a few mites on 2 of the 5 plants. They are in isolation along with the clone in a seperate room.

All plants are abot 3 weeks from seed, still in veg. Funnily, the clone that sat in the outside closet in darkness for 2+ days did show sex, it is a female. At least some silver lining to a bug infested clone.

BATTLE PLAN
*Keep all plants, infested or not, in low temperature/high humidity environment.

*Spray as often as possible with cold water.

*Spray infested plants with 1:1 isopropyl alcohol/water solution often.

*Add pre filter to intake

*Clean entire grow cabinet with bleach solution, making sure to spray any nooks, crannies, and crevices especially well.

*Clean entire apartment in most thorough manner possible.

*Buy Hot Shot No Pest strip from HD tomorrow (damn you, Thanksgiving).

*Monitor progress continuously.

*Repeat entire process 3 more times in 3 day intervals to kill all the eggs that hatch (damn things are worse than fleas!)


OTHER THOUGHTS

I am going to try putting lemon peels in water for 24+ hours, and then spraying the plants with that. I heard somewhere that the oils in the lemon peels make it tough for the mites to respirate.

I would like to add ladybugs. I am not willing to order other predatory bugs online. I bet I can find ladybugs somewhere around town though.

I am going to look into diatomaceous earth. I hear it is like a powder that you put on the plants/soil that is extremely jagged and will rip the bugs apart as they crawl over it.

I am unwilling to use Neem Oil for now. I will always be unwilling to use Avid or toher heavy duty insecticides.



I wil update my progress over the coming days and weeks. Any suggestions are more than welcome! I am very thankful on this day for RIU and all the help found here.

Another organic method to try is to soak some lemon peels in water. The lemon oil will be drawn out into the water, and you can put the lemon water in a sprayer and coat the leaves. The lemon oil affects the wax in the "lung" structures of the mites. Not really lungs, but they breathe through em anyway.

I am currently mixing up a batch of lemon oil. I consulted with my gf, who tells me the oil is only found in the zest. I was unable to zest my lemons using my dull carrot peeler, so I diced them fine with a sharp knife and submerged them in water. I will wait 24-72 hours and then spray the plants with this mixture in hopes of suffocating the little fuckers.

So far, results with cold, damp Oregon air as well as misting/spraying with cold water on possible infected plants and 1:1 isopropyl alcohol on infected plants has been greatly successful. The infected plants have no webs or living mites on them only 2 hours after the 1:1 was applied. I am slightly sad because I have a microscope and was going to examine my mites, but they are all dead.

Tomorrow, I will clean the house thoroughly and disinfect the grow cabinet with a bleach solution. I will also put any clothes that might carry them in the wash. These little fuckers are as bad as fleas, which I have conquered several times for my 3 cats.

I am determined to 99.9% contain these mites using natural, organic-ish methods. Please join me.

dukeofbaja said:

Another organic method to try is to soak some lemon peels in water. The lemon oil will be drawn out into the water, and you can put the lemon water in a sprayer and coat the leaves. The lemon oil affects the wax in the "lung" structures of the mites. Not really lungs, but they breathe through em anyway.

I am currently mixing up a batch of lemon oil. I consulted with my gf, who tells me the oil is only found in the zest. I was unable to zest my lemons using my dull carrot peeler, so I diced them fine with a sharp knife and submerged them in water. I will wait 24-72 hours and then spray the plants with this mixture in hopes of suffocating the little fuckers.

So far, results with cold, damp Oregon air as well as misting/spraying with cold water on possible infected plants and 1:1 isopropyl alcohol on infected plants has been greatly successful. The infected plants have no webs or living mites on them only 2 hours after the 1:1 was applied. I am slightly sad because I have a microscope and was going to examine my mites, but they are all dead.

Tomorrow, I will clean the house thoroughly and disinfect the grow cabinet with a bleach solution. I will also put any clothes that might carry them in the wash. These little fuckers are as bad as fleas, which I have conquered several times for my 3 cats.

I am determined to 99.9% contain these mites using natural, organic-ish methods. Please join me.

Click to expand...

Just beware that the "natural" methods generally don't do so well on the eggs of the spider mite. Even the 1:1 ratio of rubbing alcohol puts a damper on the live mite activity, but it hasn't gotten rid of them completely - that is in my case. If your plants are still in the veg stage, you can still use much stronger poisons, but once they go into flower, you are limited to the natural remedies...most of which I've tried without success. This weekend, I'll be going to my local hydro store for the AzaMax or Floramite.
Note - the eggs usually hatch within 72 hours - sometimes a bit longer with cold ambient conditions.
Best of luck.

Thanks for the kind words of help, Stonefish. I am going to look into the Azamax, because I hear it will kill the eggs, too. And I am slowly becoming less resistant to floramite/avid in rotation as I see these resilient little fuckers are still in a few places on the worst infected plant.

The cabinet has been cleaned in a bleach solution, and I sprayed all the little nooks/crannies with a stronger solution. I also cleaned the whole house, added a pre filter to my intake, and put a hot shot no pest strip in the veg layer. I put the infected plants back in the cabinet after a good dousing in a product that contains pyretrhrins (.01 %) and sulfur (.2 %). I will not use it again as it only works on contact, leaves a residue on the plants, and seems like it slowed new growth.

A quick check this morning after having the lights on all night (meaning the plants got dry, warm air again) revealed some mites, but doing well overall. I have them back in cold air (65, 40% rH), but after 12 hours of full lights, temps get up to 85 with 25% rH, which is just what they love.

More updates to come as time goes on and eggs hatch.

Update: After careful inspection of the undersides of all leaves with a jeweler's loupe (x30), no mites.

The downside is that I killed two plants due to the sulphur in Ortho Ecosense. Even after a long time in the dark, damp room with constant misting, only my WMD clone survived and has new growth. The rainwreck (trainwreck x affgooey) is dead. The bagseed that looked like trainwreck (not rainwreck) grew balls, even though it was under 24 hour light. The seed that came from the same bag has been flowering for a week now and shows no signs of being female, even though both NL type bagseeds I flowered are clearly female already.

By the way, the WMD clone has collapsed twice due to underwatering but yet came back to life unexpectedly both times. It has also come back from the sulphur burn, unlike the others. When it was brand new, we named it Alona, which means 'strong as oak' in Hebrew. It was an apt name in hindsight.

Hope this helps