Moflow
Well-Known Member
One of the reasons I stopped using cheap B&Q soil was spidermites and thrip.Oh man, even more cattle stuff?!
Do the little white dots shine a little silvery? If yes, it's so called tripse! The ladybucks and gladiator mites should also help here.
Seems to me that your soil was not of good quality...
Tripse are most of the time introduced over the potting soil. Cheap soil is not heated up to kill those insects and therefore it is sometimes full of bad insects. Mix a few cups of diatomaceous earth under the potting ground or buy equally a good soil mix next time. Pro-Mix, Light-Mix for example.
Diatomaceous earth destroys the chitin shell of insects, both the bad and the good ones unfortunately, they simply "bleed to death". It is eg. used in horses or cowsheds to lime the walls and floor or as flo-powder for dogs, cats, chickens, etc.
You really had a lot of bad luck with this run.
The last attack I had was thrip.
I used Mighty Wash, left them a few days and then introduced amblyseius cucumbers.
No more thrip!
I've also had great success getting rid of spidermites with their other products.
https://www.defenders.co.uk/pest-solutions/thrips-control.html.
They used to make a concentrated spray for spidermite control - was 100% Succesful but it was taken off the market 4/5 years ago..... damm those eu safety rules lol
My theory is people dump their garden waste - which is full of pests in amenity centre, they compost it and resell back to us still full of pests!
I quite probably have spidermites and thrip in my outdoors garden but nature keeps things in check with cooler temps and birds etc. But when the cheap contaminated soil gets introduced to optimum growroom temps the wee feckers just explode.
I highly recommend introducing the predator mites.
Although I can remember once my son and his mate got their wires crossed at a grow they had. They had spidermites so mate got the predators and applied them and next day my son sprayed the plants with insecticides! Doh!