If they are all over then get rid of the palnt or quarantine it applying the soap untill they are gone. They my not ever go the eggs just survive and hatch once you think you got them.

This is what I finally did, 38 hours ago. In a pot I put a chopped up onion, a few cloves of garlic, a cap full of canola oil, a few drops of Dawn, added water, put on stove and brought to a boil. Simmered a few minutes, took off stove and let solution cool. Then I strained some into a spray bottle, and sprayed the leaves of the plant with a hard spray, hitting every mite on the plant. Then what was left over, I drenched the soil. Now I have garlic all over the top of the soil and my whole porch smells like an Italian restaurant! That was over 38 hours ago and I have not seen one red spider mite anywhere. My plant still looks pretty healthy. My plan is to keep watching the plant and the soil every day for signs of spider mites. My question now is how long before I know it is safe to transplant the bell pepper plant, length of time that would probably prove there was no more spider mite problem?
Thanks,
Sheila

I'm having a hard time picturing this: you're planting a pepper plant into a fifty gallon drum? I must be missing something.

Anyway, you may have better luck keeping the mites under control if you get it outside in the 'real world'. Don't worry if you don't get rid of them all; spider mites are every where and a few won't hurt your plant.

Be VERY careful about that magic elixir you've invented, and how it might react to direct sunlight.

SO! Now comes the real question. I've never heard anyone describe spider mites as fuzzy. (They aren't and you couldn't see the fuzz even if they were.) Many people find it difficult to even spot them with the naked eye at all.

Are you certain that you're seeing spider mites, or something else? There are other mites that better fit this description.

rhizo: I can understand your confusion on what I am doing and why I am doing it. For years I had a very big vegetable garden, with at least 50 tomato plants, 20 bell pepper plants, and lots of assorted other vegetables and herbs. Then a few years ago I started having a lot of medical problems and because of those medical problems, I am now disabled and not able to get down on the ground and really work a garden the way you need to. This past year my husband took all his recyclable items to market and emptied out 29 50gal. drums. Since my biggest problem is getting down and not being able to get up again, I thought maybe I could take advantage of a few of these empty drums and grow just a few plants--I wouldn't have to stoop or bend to reach the plants. So I took 3 of them and washed them well, put wire window screen mesh in the bottom where the holes were located (to prevent fire ants from getting in), then filled each drum with a mixture of perlite, peat moss, top soil, and potting soil. I originally only had 2 plants to go into them--one tomato plant and one bell pepper plant. When I saw that I would have enough of all those ingredients left over for another barrel, this is when I made up the 3rd barrel. But I did not have a 3rd plant to go into it at the time and it was too late to start something from seed. So I bought another bell pepper plant to go into the 3rd barrel. But as young as that 3rd plant was, I was afraid to put it out just yet--our temps are close to 100 degrees every day here in GA. So I put it in a big pot on our enclosed porch that has glass windows all around it. I was waiting for it to get a lot bigger before putting it outside. Now my husband really put those 3 barrels too close together (that 's going to cause another problem later), so I didn't want to put the infected plant on the porch outside until I got rid of its spider mites--don't want the spider mites to travel to my other 2 healthy plants. Since I only have 2 good plants, I would really hate to throw this one away if it can be saved. So now can you imagine what I am talking about?

Just before I came here, I got an email from my PC tech site, from a poster who gave me a lot of good recipes that are suppose to kill spider mites. On my Tech site they have a category that lets you post about anything that you want to either ask about or talk about (except religion or politics). I checked my bell pepper plant on the porch a few minutes ago and there were a few mites again on the leaves, I suspect those are from eggs that hatched. And yes I am positive that they are Southern red spider mites. They are not really fuzzy, just at first glance when I saw them did I think they were fuzzy. They are so tiny that I have a hard time seeing them--but they look just like the images on Google image search and they also have the same action--they keep building a web across my pot. If any of the recipes I was sent work, I will post the one back here that really worked.
Thanks for your post,
Sheila

Gotcha! Let us know how everything works out.