Removing and Preventing Spider Mites

i recently tried another spray called Take-Down, and it claims you can use it up to harvest day without affecting buds. it's basically canola oil, pyrethrins and an emulsifier. works like a charm. no stink, no bugs, no ruined nugs. plus it says you can use it up to 10 times per crop, but i only used it twice and haven't had issues with the little bastards returning. it also kills bug in all stages of life, including dormant cycles.

i got my new test sample of a product to try., it actualy kills the eggs to. and is doubled asd a food. i havent tried it yet but the reviews claim its a 1 time treatment. its not avail yet in north america. so if this works we may be takin over those right to sell it over here.
kills on contact, you can literaly watch them die.

works emediatly on mites, predatory insects, aphids, scarab flies in soil. enhances resistance to disease, increases folia output, and growth in stomata.
can be used as a foliar or a dunk treatment

hmmm... let me know how it works but also what the ingredients are. those are some pretty substantial claims so i would think it has some risks associated

i posted that off the bottle...not our claims or mine. if it suks ill say so. i will repost on it as right now i had a bad re occurance of mites so ill put it to the test.

heres a couple pics of what i have to deal with for an infestation.

Serious shit man i just saw this pics and my skin crawled . I started my first run recently and i had the pleasure of purchasing my first genetics from a dispensary . When i got home , being the newb that i was , or am? , i saw that i had fucken mites all over . So i flipped out and realized either i take these back and get my money , which they were happy to do , or i would battle the borg for the first time . I chose to battle . After reading a ton of fucken shit out here , i started to see the same shit popping up in post of happiness and success . Now i know you can beat the borg with many things , this was just my choice . its called Bayer forbid 4d . Its not sold everywhere , but i saw it online at quarter of the price if you get it from someone . This stuff fuck the borg up man . The hydro guy looked at me , and said get em , when i got home i did . They are gone .


Only in veg though and you have to do it right . Basically right at the first weeks and right before you go into flower . You can rest assured that your harvest will be sucessful especially if you have a 8 to 10 week strain , as the coverage is for 2 months and definetly do not want to spray this shit on your buds . Its not a systemic and really for as good as it is , i would still use the shit . Then again i still eat Mc Donalds . And if you eat Mc Donalds , then ........ haha

ya sometimes we need to use drastic shit to kill once and for all.
my last attempt was with Dr Doom Botanics, its organci and safe to use in bloom but wont kill eggs. most wont. ive also tried azamax and faqiled misserably for me. i do see otherts claim its good but wasnt here. the Botanics worked great then i got lazzxy from being sik here and they came back with a vengance. so time to use this new shit and be done with it.

99.99999% of the time we get these buggers from others cuts. i wouldnt even buy smoke from that shop if they are pok having rooms full of bugs.

i wish you luck bro , With all aspects of your grow .

im sure this will work. ive talked to people in spain and other ereasd in europe where its from. and users not sellers and all had 100% rsults and swear by it.

thx.

Just out of curioutity why not use azatrol..if I'm not mistaken it has a very good track record and isn't terribly expensive (4 ounces on amazon was 30.00 bucks)

best of luck with the spray. the 2 best store-bought sprays i've tried are Mite-rid and Take-Down. Mite-Rid is organic and controls them for around a week per application, and is safe to spray up to a week before harvest, without affecting the flavor or burn of the buds. the downsides are it can only be sprayed twice per crop, and runs around $25-$30 for a 1oz. bottle. the Take-Down doesn't say it's organic, but it's basically canola oil and natural pyrethrins with an emulsifier, and is safe enough to not need an MSDS. it claims it can be sprayed up to harvest day safely, but because it requires a larger concentration of oil i would advise against use close to harvest. it can also be applied 10 times per crop, and costs less, which is an advantage over the Mite-Rid.

azatrol azamax...aza-whatever...lol ....are all based with the same active ingredient. thats what im looking for. and all are way to slow or stop the breeding processes or the feeding cycles so they slowly starve to death, but still wont touch eggs. and they can be dormant for up to 1 year then come back.
but according to what the label says they do as they make claim to,.im doine with these little pee-ons...i want them dead now. no time for repeated treatments here.

From ehow:

So I am getting ready to build a cabinet and was considering using cedar for the walls, but after doing some light researching of spider-mites on google I decided to go with a cheaper wood because it seems spider mites like cedar. Seems that they like just about anything so i'll be using a cheap plywood but spider-mites do not like garlic (and chives/cilantro as viagro suggests). This is from ehow:

Prevention/Solution
As spider mites do not like garlic, planting garlic alongside other plants will produce an environment that will discourage spider mites from becoming active.

Effects
Plants stressed by drought can produce chemical changes that make them more enticing to spider mites. Keep plants moist with a vinegar-garlic solution to discourage spider mites from consuming plant leaves.

Considerations
Spider mites often become problems in yards and gardens because of the use of chemical pesticides that destroy their natural predators. These pesticides also harm the environment. Using a natural, garlic-based insecticide will treat spider mites as well as help preserve the environment.

What a great thread! I just finished it, and I've been having the worst spider mite problem, but this thread gave me so many ideas

RRLBT420, or anyone, I have a question: I was at my local health food store today because I wanted to make my own organic mite cocktail like you, and they have the oils and extracts you recommended in your recipe e.g. rosemary, cinnamon, clove etc. The oils come in two forms, ones for aromatherapy (most of them say "external use only") and ones that seem to be edible i.e. for cooking and stuff. The cooking ones are about double the price, and it's already pretty expensive stuff even just for aromatherapy. So my question is, are the aromatherapy oil extracts applicable and safe to use in the home made mite spray, or do I need the edible versions in order to be safe for my plants?

Medi 1

Is this now available in North America? THX

I know this is an old thread, but I grow rosemary and make it into an infusion and dilute it down and it works good. I rotate it with neem, Organicide, and fruit tree spray.

God's Balls said:

Hahaha, here in Cali I tell people they live here for the same reason we do: It's goregeous! So it's just a matter of time before they hitch a ride on a cutting -- or just ride that intake fan breeze. Filters will help, but you gotta open the door sooner or later. Then there's your clothes, or the dog finally makes it into your hideout. Kinda like powdery mildew, our tomato plants got hammered this cool summer, right outside. Challenges occur naturally.

Maybe I missed someone else's post, but has anyone tried rosemary oil? There's a product, SNS-217, that works great against mites AND eggs. But expensive. It's just 2% rosemary oil and an emulsifier. You can bulk order the oil online, mix the ratio, and add a couple drops of dish soap. Same thing. I find it works great--and CHEAP!! Beyond that, start treating your cuttings and veg plants with neem/Azamax on the regular, whether you see mites or not. It sets up a good internal defense for down the line.

Best of luck. Spider mites are quite treatable. Like herpes, I'm told.

Click to expand...

rockinriggin said:

I know this is an old thread, but I grow rosemary and make it into an infusion and dilute it down and it works good. I rotate it with neem, Organicide, and fruit tree spray.

Click to expand...

How do you make the rosemary into an infusion?

Great thread, oldie but still very handy. I have been growing indoors/outdoors for 25 years. Never had a spider mite problem. Lucky I guess. In the end, it had a lot to do with prevention. I always treated my babies and veg plants with neem oil. I have always had stuff like End All on hand, over the years, there have been other products, but End All 3 in 1 is a good one to have in the nursery (clone room and pre-veg staging area). A plant never made it out of my nursery if there was anything slowing it down. In the veg room, I misted with neem mixed with a light pyrethrin spray... I generally did this for incoming clones, this time, however, something slipped. Also in prevention, heat and humidity are important things to note. I don't want to get into those areas here, but I will say that you want it humid if you are trying to slow them down a bit. Below 80 degrrees is VERY IMPORTANT... not always that easy to accomplish though, as with the temps of late outside.

So yeah, and growing 100% organic is a MUST for medical marijuana to me. Usually, if all processes and measures are taken, you shouldn't see them, right? And everyone knows that carelessness is the sister of death. haha. One day, I brought shady clones in from a friend who I KNEW had a problem. Well, I didn't keep one of them in the nursery long enough. I noticed a small outbreak around that plant when it was in the veg closet. I immediately released 3000 lady bugs. They took care of the small outbreak in 3 days. Well, the ladybugs weren't detailed enough, and I could still see eggs on some leaves. I sprayed them down with 3 in 1 and when they recovered, I put them in my tent. Again, I should have kept on them. I should have isolated them RIGHT THEN AND THERE. I fucked up, and now the plants that have been flowering for nearly 4 weeks are showing signs of infection. There are also plants that are 2 days from being whacked down, and I haven't seen any activity on any of those as of yet. I dumped 10K ladybugs in my room, mostly in the 4 x 8 tent. That was 2.5 days ago. The ladybugs are not performing that well due to the heat and humidity. Heat is hard to keep under 81 and the humidity is at 55. Tonight, I am going to remove as many as I can see with my hands and a small paintbrush. Then I am going to knock the temp down to 65 to put all the bugs to sleep. When I wake up, I will be going to the grow store to buy .... something. I will keep reading all available resources till I settle, but Ed Rosenthal Zero Tolerance seems to be pretty cool or Rid Mite.... but I am glad I stumbled across this thread and hope to add to it. The only thing I haven't seen is PICS. Funny, because there are tons of pics of spider mites in some grow journal threads and it seemed like they didn't mention it.

Well, here, let's see what we can do... I already plucked these lower leaves and I am nervous doing this, but here are some pics of spider mites, webs, eggs.... and the leaf damage.

Call me brave for this, I hate looking at these bastards! But in the first pic, you will see BEFORE and AFTER I sprayed the area with regular End All... in there, the microscope, and obviously the digital camera - two of your best tools to see bugs you can't see. For spider mites, you can see them with the naked eye. One thing I learned is that if you have one type of bug, there are probably others. Sure enough, you can see a mealy worm in one pic and a thripe in another. I have had these guys before, I think they occur pretty easily when you are growing in a carpeted room, no matter how hard you try. And DONT have a cat in your house or you'll have those.

Enough Bullshit, BRING ON The Spider Mites ... I guess I am up for the challenge Sad to say I don't have some instant kill or bombs on deck, so we have to let this problem sleep at 11 when the lights go out.



You can see that they appear elevated above the leaf, that's because they are on webs...





Here is the White and Yellow spots everyone keeps talking about. For someone new to spider mites like me, you might have mistaken this for other things, like I did a little at first... I quickly learned that it was bugs when I flipped a leaf over. That is generally how you find most bugs, on the bottom.


On the back of that leaf, we find crawlers (larvae), Spider Mites Fully Grown, Webs, and Eggs.

Close-ups of that blade:






Another Devastated leaf and closeups to follow:






Notice the tight webbing and the dozens of eggs... notice that crawler in the middle bottom right:


Fully grown one that is plump from eating... it's also dead, with a slight gangster lean...


That leaf was beat up pretty bad lol. All jokes aside, leaves in that condition are serving no purpose on your plant. Not only are they breeding grounds for new generations, but they are probably far too damaged to get anything done for the plant. This time, the damage was focused around where the blade veins meet at the stem, because that is where they were concentrated on the back... The purple stem is a sure sign that something is wacky...


Again, what I did was brave because it wasn't even worth those shots... wish the camera was better and there was a tripod... but there they are... that was scary though...

Wow. I did it. I sprayed End All on a paper towel and wiped my camera off, then I took a shower before making this post. I am gonna go get something sweet in the morning and keep the HPS's off after the treatment. I have a couple clip lights I could use to keep the plants in daytime mode. Shit this sucks... But I will keep updating this as I go along. This is my first spider mite outbreak ever, so I hope I make it through... Thanks to this thread and all the other things I have been reading lately, I feel pretty good about the ones coming out on Sunday (two days) unless I have to do an emergency cut down. At least its only 2 days early! I will sacrifice those two days to make sure I don't get any bugs in my buds! Five plants in 2 days... Marathon, they are monsters too, a Church, Cheese, Trainwreck, PCK, and a Skunk no 1.

The ones with the spider mites were KKSC (x2) and LA Confidential. They rode in on a Lemon Larry OG from Detroit.

The ones that have been in there for four weeks are (Closest to the outbreak on out) Apollo 13, juicy Fruit, White Lightning, G13 and PCK.

If anyone is paying attention that knows, I am also in the midst of a breeding project with that last set of plants. Will hitting them hard with Organic spray that will wear down in 5 weeks or so.... Will that fuck me over on the breeding project point blank? Seems kinda fucky to even go forward with a lower bud pollination now that there are bugs walking around the tent, but after I kill them down, if I am successful, is there still any hope of doing the pollinating this run? Give it to me straight if you know.

Wish me luck, send me any pointers if ya got one...

I just pulled the TrainWreck. It seems resistant. There are several leaves near the buds with bugs. I pulled off all the fans, especially the damaged ones. I will harvest this first as it looked like it had the most infected leaves. I cut down a Cheese branch (lower) and looked it over. Several fans were infected, nothing on the actual buds. Cheese is very stinky, so that might be what is deterring the infestation from going into the buds. You can never be too sure, so I looked at it closer with a 30x magnifying glass. I seen nothing suspicious inside the buds or on any sugar leaves. Whew. Well, there is no doubt that harvest time just got bumped. I also noticed that the outbreak is spreading to the plants on the outer edges of the tent... the ones that are ALMOST done. I would have given them at least five more days. The Skunk No. 1 should go for another week to ten days. The calyx on the skunk are barely swollen to my liking. I have a small crew coming over so I can work on the bug problem while they trim. Alright, I have my list of things I will be buying 1 bottle of something which I will use three times over a ten day span. If something pops back up, I will get something else... I'm getting nothing as far as feedback here, whatever, here is my list of shit from most desired to I'll settle for it:

1. No Spider Mites
2. ER's Zero Tolerance
3. Doktor Doom Spider Mite Knock Out
4. Mite-Rid
5. Azatrol

and if all this don't stop them I will do a total cut down and start everything from scratch after I bomb the whole house, and double bomb the tent and veg closet.

so i went to the grow store with this list and they basically laughed at me. Its all about the Mighty Wash. I isolated the Apollo 13 plant (which I had already removed about 20% of the fans due to destruction) and unloaded about 16 oz on it with a powerful hand spray bottle. Several hours later, the plant had a plastic like sheen about it. The mites were gone. I mean, GONE. The eggs were still there but I read reports of them turning yellow and the webs just crumbling to dust as you wipe the eggs out. Wow. Its like the Gods just handed me this shit. I then unloaded a quart on the outbreak plants and the surrounding plants. When I wake up, I will pull the rest of the harvest plants out and SLAM the rest of the plants in the tent with the rest of Gallon 1. $40. Gallon 2 is to make sure they don't come back any time in the NEAR future. Also, I will probably have it around for clone dipping in the future. I just realized that these are not you're every day spider mites. I have at least three different kinds of spider mites and they are all resistant to any level of Pyra under .1 PERIOD. These fuckers will drink End All like its Kool Aid. So far as I know, the Mighty Wash hasn't effected the Ladybug population at all. Maybe made em a little confused for a few, but I am sad that their food just vanished. I don't know where they went, but they are dead cuz I can see a few of those. The fact is, you won't know till I do an in depth when it all comes back 0nline in the monrning. I will take pics of the whole thing. Remember, I am also harvesting and managing a nursery so today I had to train some hipsters on trim down while I worked on this shit. I killed at least a thousand or more of those shit heads, but I also trimmed with my homies, knocking out the Church and the Trainwreck. No signs of buggy buds.... but I am watching the drying rack...

i have been having my own outbreak of both spidermites in my flowering tent and powdery mildew in my veg area. I sprayed everything down today with neem oil and a few hours later followed up with a seltzer water spray on the plants to boost the CO2 and give them a little boost. Will post pics hopefully. I will be keeping a close eye on them all for the next few days. Hopefully another spray or two will knock them down.