Spidermites... WWIII

I Just found mites in my garden, I run a perpetual harvest dwc system, so I have many stages of flowering, How do I get Rid of Them, I dont want to Have to start all over!! How late in the cycle can I spray the plants and still be safe to smoke? I have ORGANICIDE it's sesame oil,edible fish oil,& water, If I have to sacrifice a few girls I will but I'd rather not. Thanks In advance for any help

StonerSteveo said:

Has anyone herd of Osage orange's ?(softball sized fruit lime green)you just site it in corners of room
they are sed to keep spiders and bugs away! but no good scientific proof.
I have been over run with spider mites and I'm back in control for now but I'm going to try the Osage orange to get them OUT!
folks around here say they keep spiders and bugs out of basement's,barns.
lets hope they work on spider mites!
anyone

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it dont work! basterds started sucking on the spider balls(fuck!)

I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll say it here too... Don't use Organocide! Sold at Home Depot and Lowes. 12 hours after application, plants look like they're dying. I'm sure I killed them all but suffered some casualties.

In the past I've used a hand sprayer filled with icy water. I sprayed them daily for about two weeks and the problem went away. Who knows, I might have had the mites till harvest but I harvested it and smoked that shit... mites and all. haha.

Luv2Gro said:

for another update...
so, the alcohol/water worked pretty good, and I would recommend that for any plants later in flower or any infestation that is in the early stages,.

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Ok so this doesn't make sense, to answer your original question about alcohol ruining your crystals, well yes. This is something alot of people have trouble holding on to: THC is a wax pretty much. It is both alcohol and fat soluable. This is why people got the idea to make edibles! Using the fat molcules to disolve the THC crystals for uptake into delicious cakes and then eventually into your bloodstream. So spraying alc on your buds is literally melting away the THC! It's like spraying liquid butter on your plants because both are solvents to the THC crystal!

What is also complete crack is" THC needs heat to be like extracted" or something? Why do people say this, it's not true. You could dump a ball of hash in some moonshine and swish it around I bet it would melt 100 percent and if you had the balls to drink that stuff you would get THC in your blood along with the alc. Make sense? I mean thats why you clean your bong with rubbing alc bc its dissolving that crap (THC with mass amount of carbon in it, people call this resign). It is the same resign that starts on your buds in your grow room and it flows from grower to consumer like water every step of the way you are trying to preserve what is natural, the genetics and the THC on your buds. So wiping them clean with rubbing alc is not doing them any good to answer your question.

Also no more mystery about THC, it's a wax, it dissolves, people looooove to smoke it ok..

these bastard spider mites were in my room. I hit the smaller flowering ones with neem oil the first day and used tree tanglefoot at the base and at a few spots along the stalk of the biggest one flowering to stop them from laying eggs or larvae in the soil.The next morning i noticed them on my babies in veg,so I freaked out and went and bought doktor dooms spider mite KO and hosed all the plants down last night after testing the spray on a sacrificial lamb of my genetics . I lost a few small leaves on the smallest babies(I probably drenched the leaves instead of just hitting it lightly)I did notice one of the small flowering ladies had a couple small buds that looked like they migght have gotten hit too hard by spray and were turning brown(my bad,I was a little overzealous with the spray) but otherwise,when I looked tonight I didnt see any movement,just some black dots.I also sprayed the soil down the last 2 nights with the doktor doom in case there were any babies running around.I also got asamax when i got the doktor doom so Im gonna hit those little mofo's this weekend with part 3 of a beatdown and see if I cant win this war.

Just use cold water !

Spider mites are less than 1 mm in size and vary in color. They lay small, spherical, initially transparent eggs and many species spin silk webbing to help protect the colony from predators; they get the 'spider' part of their common name from this webbing. Hot, dry conditions are often associated with population build-up of spider mites. Under optimal conditions (approximately 80ºF), the two-spotted spider mite can hatch in as little as 3 days, and become sexually mature in as little as 5 days. One female can lay up to 20 eggs per day and can live for 2 to 4 weeks, laying hundreds of eggs. A single mature female can spawn a population of a million mites in a month or less. This accelerated reproductive rate allows spider mite populations to adapt quickly to resist pesticides, so chemical control methods can become somewhat ineffectual when the same pesticide is used over a prolonged period.
So don't give them a break ! I use a sprayer for trees ,bent the end of the wand tip up to spray cold water up to wash them off .Do this 2 times a day some times 4 times a day.

Lot's of folks have been hit by the BORG of insects, Spidermites and feel your pain. Surrender IS NOT an option. Fight the lil beaties to the very end. Lots of good tips in this thread and my personal method has worked for me.

Spider mites SUCK! If you have them on one plant chances are they are on all of them. So very small and difficult to see unless you use a loupe or magnifier(at least for me anyways). I had one harvest *almost* get ruined by the critters and then I fought back with technology...and won! I did not want to use any chemicals on my ladies so close to harvest, and ended up using...STEAM!

Bought a Rowenta steamer from Bed Bath &Way Beyond and it worked like a charm! Best way is to do this somewhat *safely* is to water your plants, wait an hour and then hit the plants EVERYWHERE with the steam. You cannot concentrate the steam in any one area for too long or you'll cook the poor plant! The neat thing about this is the temperature. The mites simply crumble and die as soon as the hot steam hits them! Again you HAVE to be careful or you'll cause more harm than good, but if you pay attention to what your doing, you can do this! After you have hit all areas thoroughly, let your ladies rest for 1-2 days then hit em again. The live mites die easily but the eggs may still hatch (nasty things). If you cannot control the mites after 3 steam treatments, you should abandon ship and chop em down, sorry. Good luck and let us know how you faired in this time of crisis.

try a humidifier with hot water and diluted Neem Oil

So the original poster had great things to say about Floramite, but then nothing after. And everyone continued to think of other methods.. I have these little bastards as well, and I can't wait to get some Floramite from the hydro store, and then get some 1:2 or 1:3 alcohol to water mixture and spray em. Great tips, Can't wait to apply.

Alright, so I sprayed a solution of alcohol and water with no effect.. well, that's not true, I managed to kill a bubba kush clone with the concoction. When I called the local hydroponic store he claimed that Floramite was carcinogenic. He said it was only for ornamental flowers and should never be used on something you're gonna eat or smoke. He recommended Azamax and I received the same recommendation from a different hydro store so I bought it. It works.. it looks like the oil in the mixture sticks to the webs and the bugs and they die. Excellent. Alcohol and water bad. Floramite horrible. Azamax ahh..

I'm not at all sold on this alcohol/water mix. I've had battles with mites, and i still get them in the summer for sure. I suggest Azamax, Organicide, and when the problem gets bad enough , Pyrethrin.

The Azamax just drys the cleanest, and seems to have little or no effect on the plants. The Organicide, and other vegetable oil based sprays leave a waxy coating that I don't like the look of. I'm not sure what the effect it has on the stomata located on the bottoms of the leaves, but it cant be real productive for the girls to have that waxy coating. Pyrethrin seems pretty harmless on the plants in veg, and I'll use it up to 25-30 days into flower, I'd use it more, but it is poison so i really make that a last resort.

The biggest thing about mites is stick with it. You should be looking at your plants everytime the light comes on, and then 10 minutes before lights go off...AT LEAST. I think there are a lot of products that are going to work for growers, but only when you are vigilant. So when you get bugs, plan on spending 30 minutes a day spraying, examining, wiping them off, etc.

Again though i would say stay the hell away from alco/water sprays. Even if it works on mites, you are definetly fucking up plant tissue, and definetly decreasing yields. In this business a 10% lower yield is prolly going to mean 300-500$ in lost weed, just in a 1 meter sq.. Just don't be a lazy stoner with these bugs, take the problem seriously, and work hard at knocking these little bitches back a bit.

Also between grows i set off bombs. Not everytime, but prolly every other. i usually have 2x1000k going, but they are a month apart so I'll just bomb when one finishes and the other is at 4 weeks. The bombs work very well.

spider mites can hatch and lay eggs w/in 3 days. start out w/ a high quality pyrethrum bomb(kills all living mites), wait 3 days, bomb again(this kills any babies that hatched from the eggs that weren't killed by the first bomb), wait 3 more days and bomb once more for good measure(kills any living mites left behind). In theory this should work because they dont have time to complete the mating cycle. Follow up w/ a thorough cleaning of grow space w/ neem spray and maintain w/ neem oil.

this has worked for me and a few people that i have told. Good Luck!

Guys, i might have just found a new way of fighting spider mites, since i m on 9th week of flowering on my trainwreck and since i had some mold issues and lost 380 grams of my last grow to mold I kinda afraid of spraying and altering humidity, so I asked my grandpa what kind of pesticide he uses for his tomatoes which also can get infested by spider mites, and he came up with a sulfuric pesticide , like a yellow powder, smells like sulfur, and mixed it with another "all purpose " pesticide, so i got a small brush and started covering all the leafs one by one, it almost took me 4-5 hours but i think it's worth it, no signs of infection after 2 weeks, i m also re aplying it every next day on the "used to be" infected areas of the plant. Also i came up with the idea that these fuckers have to walk their way to the top colas so I made sulfur rings around the stems so I ll prevent a possible cola infection that will ruin my yeild. The problem is that it looks very toxic so when i m gonna harvest I will propably watercure for a couple of days my stash , then hang dry and then air cure in order to be 100% sure i m not smoking that crap. Anyone has tried this before?

hmmmm..... strands all over everything that i can't see? creepy crawlies that i can see, but then they dissapear only a week or two later to see strands running from plant to pot to plant again? Is this spider mites? they ./....seem to be EVERYWHERE. I've sprayed with neem oil, but my entire greenhouse, from tomatoes to cucumber seedlings to marijuana plants and sprouts (i've removed all the pot and half of the plants. but still i am having issues. I suppose I could bomb the greenhouse? the thing is i have TONS of spiders to eat anything around, i guess just not enough. *sigh... this is terrible. So what do the spidermites do? they siphon from your plants leaves and stem, tapping into the plant's energy supplies, right? can you smoke bud with dead mites and shit and hatchlings on it? I know i won't, but will anyone else know the difference.?

dankesthours182 said:

So what do the spidermites do? they siphon from your plants leaves and stem, tapping into the plant's energy supplies, right? can you smoke bud with dead mites and shit and hatchlings on it? I know i won't, but will anyone else know the difference.?

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They are a big yield reducer. I've had them lots of times, but never where I saw webs and shit, never. They generally stay out of the buds, I hear it's harder for them to eat the highly resinous parts of the plant. I have also read that smoking them is no problem, but I wouldnt do it either!lol

Lady bugs neem oil and keeping the temp below 75* and the air moving. Anything below 75 they don't fuck or move really. Then they lady bugs just walk by eating the shit out of them. Worked really great for me last summer. And I plan on doing it this summer as well.