Like Dawn, I prefer using just plain water. They tend to hate water and will migrate to other places if you do it consistently when they show up.

Water may not kill them, but it doesn't kill any beneficials I might have that I didn't spot when using the hose.

Beneficals are much more susceptible to anything you spray. So if you do choose to use a pesticide, even a safe one, it's good idea to thoroughly inspect what you spray and remove beneficals before you spray.

randy

Hi Pistol!

I am happy to hear that the oil-based product worked for you. However, be careful using any sort of horticultural oil product during the hottest part of the summer. In parts of the country that have high summer temps in the upper 80s (and seldom hotter than that), such oil-based products can be very effective without being damaging.

Here in southern Oklahoma, where we are often in the mid-90s to the low 100s-110s from early to mid-June through August and sometimes September, oil products will often burn foliage and kill plants. I know this because it has happened to me and to some of my neighbors. We have had similar bad results using a lightweight horticultural oil specifically developed and sold for summer use, and neem oil, a commonly-sold and used organic product.

We also have to be very careful using hot pepper sprays and even soap sprays in the hot summer weather as similar foliar burning can occur.

If you want to use an oil-based product in hot summer weather, first test it on one plant of the type you intend to spray, wait a couple of days to see if any bad side effects occur, and then proceed if you don't see problems on the test plant. Also, if you can spray on a cloudy day during the hot weather, the cloudiness will help prevent foliar burn, as will spraying in the evening.

In "the old days", before they developed a lighterweight and so-called "summer horticultural oil", the only horticultural oils used were commonly referred to as "dormant oil" because they could only be used in the dormant season since they burned foliage.

Horticultural oils ARE great at smothering insects and their eggs if you can use them without burning the foliage. If I see early signs of spider mites or their eggs on my plants in May, when our high temps are still fairly moderate, I will use them. Otherwise, the heat forces me to steer clear of them.

And, I don't really know of a way to specifically define under which conditions foliar burn will or will not occur, because so many variable, including air temp, wind speed, etc. are involved.

Dawn

Well Dawn,

Last summer, I'm sure you remember, when I was on here pleading for help every other week, my tomatoes were attacked by spider mites, MAJOR MAJOR CASE OF APHIDS, white flies, and some kind of yellow/black polka dotted bugs in the end. I guess I thought it must have been the seaweed spray, because that was all that I was using, after the initial fertilizer at planting. I was using seaweed spray every two weeks. But then you looked at my pics and said they appeared somewhat defficient, so I don't know why I kept having problems, if they weren't overfertilized. I probably don't have to tell you that the worst aphid problem was on the tomatoes next to the canteloupe plants. Now this could have been my imagination, but the aphids were so thick on the canteloupe, that there was a horrible odor! I'm thinking I'll skip the canteloupe this year, or put them somwhere far away, maybe plant them in alley behind my fence. The spider mites, appeared at the opposite end of the garden, and I did what you told me to do with the water spray and something else and kept them under control. I am definetely ordering lady bugs and will get the good bug feeder this year.

Is there somewhere that we can buy a compost tea? Sheri

Sheri,

Have you ever had a soil test? It could be your soil is deficient in something and that deficiency gives you stressed plants, and stressed plants are more attractive to pests. It also could be that the excessive moisture and wet ground and coolness and cloudiness were "just right" for aphids and your soil was OK, though. Remember that your plants stayed really wet a long time due to circumstances beyond your control, and wet plants often cannot properly take up nutrients from the soil. This year could be entirely different.

I had aphids in my new garden here only for the first year or two, until I had built up a good population of lady bugs. Now I hardly have any at all. When aphids do arrive or hatch out or whatever, the ladybug larvae, who look like tiny gray alligator-type bugs, simply go to town gobbling them up. But, the ladybug larvae don't appear right when the aphids do. It takes the ladybugs a couple of weeks to arrive and find the aphids. Once they do, though, it is open season on aphids. (I think it is true of most predator-type insects that the mama insects don't lay eggs until they see enough "bad" insects to serve as a food source for their babies. So, your level of "bad" bugs has to reach a certain level before the predator bugs will even begin to deal with them.)

You can buy compost tea lots of different places, and I like Garrett Juice, an enhanced compost tea product to which a few other useful ingredients have been added. I buy a gallon of Garrett Juice concentrate and it lasts me forever 'cause you add 2 oz. to a gallon of plain water and spray or water with it. You also can get your own "formula" for Garrett Juice at the Dirt Doctor's website (dirtdoctor.com). Garrett Juice concentrate is expensive...but I really like it and it is a great product. One year I tried making my own compost tea and then bought all the other ingredients (cider vinegar, molasses, etc.) and I think it cost me more to make my own Garrett Juice than to buy it in the concentrated form. You can usually find compost tea concentrates at any store or nursery that sells a good selection of organic products or at websites of companies like Worm's Way, Planet Natural or Arbico (or any of the thousands of other websites that sell similar products).

Usually, it is impossible to overfeed your plants using an organic foliar spray like seaweed or fish emulsion because these are plant foods with a fairly low percentage of nitrogen. It seems like it is plants overfed with nitrogen that are overly attractive to aphids. Now, if someone uses one of the commonly-sold chemical water-soluable plant fertilizers every week or two, those plants will tend to have lots of aphids because they will be getting excess nitrogen.

I just find it hard to believe that the pest problems you had last year are a result of the use of seaweed spray. It really is more likely that the weather was the major factor. In the years when I had an aphid problem, it tended to occur from late April (if April weather was really warm) to late May. If you think about the weather we had last year when it stay so cool, wet and cloudy for so long, we had "late May" type weather for most of the summer.

Oh, and your yellow and black polka-dotted bugs may have been cucumber beetles--they come in both polka-dotted and striped versions and attack MANY plants, not just cukes. In our yard, they especially like the pumpkins and squash that my dogs "plant" around their dog yard every year by playing with/chewing up/burying old pumpkins and ornamental gourds after the fall decorating season is over. (I give the dogs the pumpkins and gourds when I remove the fall decorations from the garage and backyard area after Thanksgiving and replace them with Christmas decorations.) Because my dogs' plants sprout in hard clay soil and generally grow on the fence around their doggy yard, they are more stressed than plants in my good garden soil. I think of the dogs' plants as a "trap crop" to attract the beetles away from my garden. By the way, some years the dogs' plants survive and produce lots of gourds and pumpkins for fall decorations, and some years they don't 'cause the dogs either dig up the plants or "harvest" their own gourds and pumpkins to play with long before they are ripe. (I am the only person I know of whose dogs grow their own "toys". LOL)

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Garrett Juice

If you ever get serious about eliminating Spider mites on ornamentals there is a somewhat expensive but effective chemical that is specifically geared towards spider mites. It will not kill beneficials. The name is AVID. For severe ongoing infestations which come every year on certain plants(roses, marigolds, impatiens etc.) it can produce miraculous results. When a "blast of water" or a "spritz of oil" just isn't enough, try AVID.

Dawn, your writing is eloquent. Have you had some training, or is your knowledge what you have learned from your Dad and your experience.

Everything you said is also true for a rosarian. Meryl mention Avid, a product that I have not needed in the past, but might consider if the spider mites got too bad.

I would like to make a couple of additional comments. One is that spraying the leaves for 3 days in a row seems to help roses. They say that the first day you remove the spider mites, the second and third days you remove the eggs. When I spray, I actually use my fingers to rub the leaves, and try to remove the spider mites. If the infestation is bad, I just cut off the branches, but usually the water works. I seldom ever use an insecticide, but do about twice a year. There is one made my Ortho that lists spider mites, but I have not looked to see if it was to be used for food products.

I spray my roses with fungicide, and in the mix I use Wilt Pruf. Have you heard of that? It was originally used to put a protective coating on Christmas trees, and now many rosarians are trying to fight Rose Rosette Disease by using it. (RRD is caused by a microscopic mite.)

When I use the insecticide, I use Conserve, an insecticide that is not supposed to harm beneficials or birds.

http://www.wiltpruf.com/default.htm
http://www.dowagro.com/turf/prod/conserve.htm

Insecticidal use is a huge topic for rose growers. We can fight many inseciticides, but the spider mites are awful for us too.

Thank you so much for such an informative post. I agree that Oklahoma is not a location for horticultural oils. Some people use dormant oil in the winter, but when I tried it, it ruined my sprayer.

Sammy

Sammy,

Thanks for the use of the world "eloquent".....my DH would probably just say "can't stop talking about gardening"!

All my gardening training has been in "the school of hard knocks". LOL

As a child, I think I learned a lot about gardening by osmosis.....just helping older relatives and neighbors in their yards and gardens. Our next door neighbor always had a huge veggie garden, lots of ornamentals and a small greenhouse and I think she was a huge influence on me too.

I read voraciously, so I just try to apply what I learn, see if it works, and pass on the info either way. When I lived in Fort Worth (and this dates back to my high school years,) I listened to Neil Sperry's weekend radio show and read all his newspaper columns and, later, his books. I began listening to Howard Garrett's radio shows, and reading his columns and books in the early 1990s, I think. Both of them have been an enormous influence on me, and I do like to share what I've learned from them.

Sometimes, when faced with a problem in my landscape or garden that seems insurmountable, I will ask myself "What would Neil (or Howard) do?" More often than not, trying to answer that question for myself leads me to the solution for my problem.

I am familiar with Wilt-Pruf and first used it in the mid- to late-80s or maybe the early-1990s. I sprayed it on plants that I was digging up/transplanting at the wrong time of the year (when it was WAY too hot). True to its' name, the Wilt-Pruf prevented wilting of the transplanted plants and they all survived. I had heard (maybe from you at some previous time) that rosarians are using it for rosette disease. I hope it works.

As far as AVID is concerned, it is an Abamectin product. In the early 2000s, Abamectic was promoted as an effective organic control for fire ants. I tried it and didn't find it was particularly effective on fire ants. I have had better fire ant control with newer organic products, though. AVID is very powerful but also highly toxic to aquatic animals, so I probably wouldn't use it on my roses here as they are close to my lilypond, which house frogs, turtles, etc.

I've linked the AVID MSDS, which is a government-mandated document required for all products used horticulturally, including pesticides, insecticides, miticides, fungicides, etc. I always read an MSDS carefully before I purchase and use a product that is new to me. Often, by the time I read the hazards/cautions in the MSDS, I've talked myself out of using the product in question....and that applies to organic products as well as chemical ones.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: AVID Marerial Safety Data Sheet

May I reiterate that AVID is for serious infestations. The cost alone prohibts most week-end gardeners from using it..... AVID is a systemic miticide that is synthesized from a natural bacterium in the soil. It should only be used when mites present a serious problem (in other words do NOT spray as a preventative). You spray it 3 times (a week apart) to eliminate spider mites and their hatchlings. That's it. Done....I've been using it for so long I can't remember. At least since the 90's maybe the late 80's. When it was originally introduced it was used by Greenhouse growers to eliminate leaf miners in Columbines, spider mites and Cyclamen mites. No mention was made about Fire Ants at that time. There is a problem with resistance build up if overused (NEVER use this product unless necessary). However, since I usually only have need of it once a year or so I've not encountered this problem. There are other newer miticides on the market; Floramite,Akari, Pylon. But my experience has only been with AVID so I can't attest to their efficacy. For a small problem by all means use the more benign remedies such as blasting the mites off the back of the leaves with a forceful jet of water (and make sure it's forceful - spider mites can cling tenaciously and need to be dislodged). But if you have a large border of Marigolds, a stand of Dahlias, a bed of roses, or pots full of impatiens for example that are being mass attacked by the little buggers, know that there is something else out there that will stop them in their tracks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Miticides

Maryl and Dawn have brought up marigolds. I would not consider purchasing marigolds. I put them in my little parking lot island at our church, but never in my yard. That Avid is expensive. It is about the same as Conserve, but Conserve will kill thrips, and they are what ruin my yard. I hope that I do not ever need to use the miticide.
Sammy

AVID is now recommended for Thrips too (adults only), but having tried it briefly during the major Thrips invasion of 2005 and 2006, it wasn't as effective for me as I might have hoped. Besides I'm keenly aware of the problem of overuse causing resistance. Thrips are cyclical in my garden whereas spider mites pose a guaranteed annual problem, so I'll save my "magic bullet" for the little creepy crawlers. Besides if those Chilli Thrips ever reach us from the south, we may have to get out the nuclear war heads against them.

I do worry about the Chili Thrips. They kill the entire plant, not just the light colored blooms. Do they also kill vegetation?

From what I hear they can kill a plant. Don't have the particulars on that, so don't know if it's only small plants or if they could actually kill a shrub such as a rose. As you said, unlike the western flower thrips which usually just damage petals, they will go for the leaves as well. I'm a little nervous about ordering any plants from the lower south right now. I don't want to import them into my yard.

I see that this is an old post, but I was reading it tonight when my mother called from Michigan and told her about it. She is 82 and remembers her grandmother dealing with spider mites and other pests in the 1930's. She used fels naptha soap for everything, kept the bar soft soaking in water all day on top of the wood stove. When it got soft she would pull off the soft part to do dishes with in her dish washing pan. She would take the bar of fels naptha and use a whisk broom and use the dish water to scrub her plants for bugs, then throw the left over dish water on her garden. At that time this was an effective debugger for all her plants. I don't even know if they make fels naptha any more, when I was a child they still had it. Interesting that we are still dealing with the same bugs.
Darci

Darci,

They do still make Fels naptha soap! It isn't easy to find it though.

The problem with any soap spray in Oklahoma is that you can't use the soap in hotter weather or you'll probably burn the foliage of your plants. I never use any kind of insecticial soap after May, and won't use it in May if the high temperatures are 90 degrees or higher. I've just had too much foliar burn resulting from soap sprays used in hot weather, and it is a shame.....because insecticidal soap can be very effective on some pests.

Dawn

This is an excellent thread on Spider Mite control. Thank you Okiedawn for starting it, and for all of the great information. I am a big reader too.

Hi I've never heard of spider mites but I think I just found the mother load of them!!! I was moving my composed around early in the day. I then went inside to play with the dog and watch some tv. My legs kept itching so I decided to pull down my pants to see what was up. My legs and pants were covered with little brown/red bugs. I freaked out! They were all over me! Now all my clothes and blankets from the couch are all over the yard. I vacuumed the couch and the floors. How do I know they are out of my house? Will they start laying eggs in my house?

Spider mites infest plants, not people. I'm not sure what you've got there.

Shamae, How big are the bugs? I know you posted a photo, but without something whose size is known (like, for example a dime or a penny or something) placed beside them to provide context, it is hard for us to understand what size your pests are.

Spider mites are roughly the size of the dot over the letter "i". They are very hard to see with the naked eye and hard to view in a photo, though once you're used to seeing them, you can flip over a leaf and look at the underside of it and see the tiny mites on the plants then. Sometimes, folks new to spider mites aren't sure if they are seeing spider mites and we tell them to hold a clean white sheet of paper underneath a plant leaf and thump it. Tiny insects the size of a period will fall onto the paper and begin moving, and if that happens, they likely have spider mites. It actually is easier to identify mites on plants by the damage they do than by seeing the mites themselves.

If you can tell us more about your pests, perhaps we can help you with an ID.

If, by chance, they are the same size as spider mites, I'd suspect chiggers, but the pests in your photo look larger....more like the size of aphids? Not that I'm saying they are aphids, but rather that's just the size they are. Are you here in OK? Was your compost wet or was it dry? The more info you share, the better we might be able to help you figure out what it is that you're seeing. Or at least what it isn't.

Dawn

Those look like aphids to me. I have them bad this year.

I think they look like aphids too, but don't understand them coming out of compost? Or being on someone's clothes? That's the part that baffles me, so I am wondering if there is something that looks like aphids that would act that way? Something that likes to bite humans doesn't sound like an aphid since aphids normally feed on plants.

I was wondering if they could be some unknown (well, unknown to us at this point) pest like maybe sand fleas or something. I've never heard of aphids swarming onto people and being on their pants legs or legs either. So, I feel like the pest, even if they are the approximate size and shape of aphids, aren't likely to be a plant eater like an aphid but are more likely to be something known to bother people. That is, if we are assuming the itchiness of the OP's legs are related to the little bugs and, if I were the person with itchy legs, I'd assume the bugs caused it.

Anyone have luck with using marigolds as a "trap crop" for spider mites?

In my rural garden, the results with marigolds have been mixed. Some years they attract spider mites like crazy and make a great trap crop. Other years they do not. The smaller French marigolds seem more effective as a trap crop than the taller African varieties.

How far away should I plant my marigolds from the tomato plants?