I've been dealing with these bastards off and on for the last 2 years. I've found mighty wash to be the best at making them disappear. But for me, my grow room is in my basement some of which has a dirt floor and it is virtually impossible to sanitize an entire basement of this kind from spider mites. My growroom is enclosed within my basement in an 8x8 room but much of the enclosure is only hanging Panda film so its mostly become a huge headache for me. I didnt have them at all for the first 4 years I've been growing but they eventually showed up.
This time I'm giving one of those Hot Shot strips a go. I really didnt want to go that route because I'm just not crazy about vapor in general. I'm really sensitive to chemical smells and I can get an instant headache from certain smells but fighting these fuckers can really start to sap the fun right out of growing indoors. At least it does for me.
.......The fight continues.
your situation is similar to mine, the last five yrs I've been growing in a shed outside in the middle of a redwood forest, and there is like 5 types of spider mites around here, and no matter what I"ll get them every single grow.
I've been down that route my man, and I even lost a bet with my friend, he said predator mites would work, and I called bullshit, I had already tried them and they didn't so shit, BUT that's the whole key with predator mites, it is absolutely paramount that the correct species is chosen, otherwise they will simply take off, or hibernate.
but given the correct specie? they kick ASS at controlling mites, like WAY better than I could have imagined, that bet that I lost? well I don't like to lose bets so I let them get good and webbed before I got the predator mites, and I shit you not, within 36 hours I could see new Undamaged green growth sticking through the webs, and more importantly the webs were damn near empty, no shit, in not even two days time. In a week I couldn't find a spider mite on the plant.
lost a 100 dollar steak bet with my buddy, and his friend is my new spider mite savior, apparently organic strawberry farms all up and down the coast of California, and Oregon get BLASTED with mites, like worse than cannabis does.. but he has a pretty large and successful business doing just that alone.
In fact I believe i'm his only cannabis-customer, I think anyways
but they are a lil expensive to ship, and expensive to use, but it is THE best way, not to mention any and all sprays or treatments will leave countless lil dead spider mite bodies on your trichs, like flypaper.. not to mention their lil shits all over the place too.. disrespectful lil bastards..
but who wants to smoke that?
the predator mites clean all that up, and then they take off when the mites are gone,
done deal.
a typical application is probably around 100 bucks or so with the overnight shipping.
and that typically lasts around 3-6 months depending on the weather, hot weather as we all know makes their lifecycle/reproduction rates increase, so in the summer I sometimes need two applications, but big deal... 200 bucks is damn near worth it, JUST from saving me from the dipping, and, spraying, and rotating and re-applying that procedure every three days..
fuck all that..
i'd rather buy the mites, sprinkle them on the plants, and go do whatever-the-fuck else I need to.
2 minutes vs probably 2 hrs or so for the process of dipping/spraying/rotating the plants. and that's each
time, so in all you are saving yourself like
6 hours of mite treatments, with likely hazardous or harmful chemicals
the way I look at it is that 6 hrs, broken down by the price I pay for the mites and that's roughly 17 bucks an hour, my time is worth much more than that to me. so i'm happy to spend it.
i'd pay double that price (just don't tell my buddy that)
by the way the 100 bucks is the avg cost for a treatment for around 20 plants, that's indoor plants
so depending on how many plants you have it may be more or less.
my 2 cents anyways
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