the risk that comes with using lady bugs as a defense against is that if you have only a couple isolated plants with spider mites on them.... lady bugs herd their food, and will move them to the rest of the plants.... so a spray would be more effective. I do have access to about 20-50 praying mantises that just hang out around my house, and are ironically more expensive than ladybugs (which eat lady bugs) so I will be releasing them into the greenhouse as well to pray on the lady bugs.....
Basically the plan is to release enough lady bugs in such a way as they drastically cut down on spider mite numbers, spray garlic spray to prevent them from spreadign (the mites), and release praying mantises to keep the lady bug population low enough that they don't start herding the mites........ (praying mantises will also eat bud pillars
, they prefer the pillars over the lady bugs ) So
IF I end up having any pillars invade, the spiders (daddy long legs and such) praying mantises, and garlic spray (because it repells pillars as well) should keep them at bay enough for me to just have to pluck a couple..... I have been doing all around detailed analyses on the plants daily checking for pillars on virtually every bud site, as well as keeping track of the spidermites, which I was hoping would stay contained...... also a WHOLE bunch of lady bugs (about 130 for every 200 released) will fly away on the wind etc.
I haven't seen a single pillar
crossing my fingers they stay 350 ft away and around the corner in the flower garden
where I have seen about 20 milling away