The video doesn't play for me. Instead I get a message telling me "please sign in to view this video".

If they are mites, they would be about the same size as the dot over the letter i in this sentence.

One way to check for the presence of spider mites is to hold a sheet of white paper beneath the leaves and thump a few leaves directly the paper. If they are mites, they usually will fall to the paper and scramble around on it.

If what you are seeing is larger than what I described, then without being able to see them, all we can do is guess. They could be thrips, aphids, mealy bugs or any one of many other types of very small pests.

Got any more clues for us? Do they run? Jump? Fly?

Regardless, since your plants are indoors and are, presumably, not being subjected to the hot temperatures outdoors, you could spray the plants (be sure to spray the undersides of the leaves too) with neem oil or a commercially-prepared (not homemade) insecticidal soap spray. If you do that, don't expose the plants to direct sunlight for a couple of days because the foliage that has been sprayed with an oil or soap product can burn in the heat.

Why a commercially-prepared insecticidal soap product and not a home-made one? Because home-made versions often burn the foliage, and it often occurs because the person making it uses something like Dawn dish detergent....which is a detergent and not a soap. Detergent and soap are not identical and, in gardening formulas, detergent is not a substitute for soap. Detergents are much more prone to burn and kill foliage than true soap is. Also, new gardeners often find a formula for a home-made soap spray online and mix it up....and maybe put too much soap in the formula, thinking that if a little bit of soap is good, then more would be better. That's not true. If you put too much soap in a home-made soap spray you intend to use as an insecticide or miticide, you've instead created a herbicide that has the potential to completely kill your plants.

Thanks Dawn. The video might play now. Turns out I had it set to private, which obviously wouldn't be visible to others lol.

They do seem to be about the size of the "i" dot. So far they don't seem to fly or jump. I'm not sure if the speed they move if their regular walking speed or if they are running, but they move pretty fast. There doesn't seem to be any actually plant damage yet. They almost look like whitish chiggers (in size and shape), except possibly a tiny bit bigger, since I seem to be able to make out a bit more detail than usual for chiggers.

My mom has kept indoor plants my entire life, and I've kept them off and on in the 8 years I've lived in Oklahoma, and I don't recall ever seeing these bugs, but I suppose that doesn't actually mean they weren't there.

Oops. Thanks for the info about soap and water. Well, hopefully I didn't kill my plants. My mom always mixed soap and water to get rid of bugs, but she used it for soaking/watering to get rid of the bugs when bringing a pot in from outside rather than a spray. Since she's always done it that way, that's what I did, but most of it went straight on the dirt since that's where I was seeing the bugs. Only a little got on the leaves, so hopefully they won't burn. Now I know to look for a commercial one instead next time I'm at the store...

I thought of getting DE, but I'm not even sure if anyone around here sells it. Maybe Tractor Supply... I've only ever used it once, to combat a flea infestation in our carpets, and that was back in Virginia. I've heard different things about its effectiveness in potted plants, with some saying you can't get it wet and others saying it's fine to get it wet to soak into the dirt as long as you then give it time to dry out and become solid again.

-Kim

They don't look like spider mites from what I could see. They do look like white flies that you,see on house plants, but I've never seen one move so fast. since you have sprayed the soil you should be ok. If the persist imbuing about repotting into a good clean mix and scub your pot first.

If it went straight on the dirt, it shouldn't burn the foliage. I believe these soap sprays were helpful when made "back in the day" with soap. The problem is that nowadays most dish soaps aren't soap---they are the detergent. Some of them have degreasers added. The detergents and degreasers aren't what you want on your plant foliage.

Those little insects look too big to be mites. I hope the soap gets them. You could try the DE, but it works better on insects that move more slowly, allowing the sharp edges of the pieces of DE time to slice up the insects' exoskeleton or cuticle. The thing about the DE is that it won't hurt. My experience with DE is that it works slowly even when it stays dry and I don't bother with it much any more because I haven't found that it really seems all that helpful. I think it has the potential to be helpful, but it just depends on what sort of pests you are having.

They look more like whiteflies than anything else, but I'm not a whitefly expert. Perhaps what you're seeing is one of the younger instars of the white flies. I believe they go through 4 or 5 instars before they reach adulthood, and the younger instars are highly mobile but the final instar before adulthood doesn't move much. Usually if you have whiteflies they congregate in hoards on the undersides of leaves once they reach the adult stage and can fly.

Whatever they are, if you didn't rid yourself of them by watering with soap or if DE doesn't get them, maybe you could catch them on yellow sticky traps. Since yellow sticky traps are not easy to find in local stores, you might be able to put one of those yellow fly strips in the pot, lying on top of the growing medium, and see if the little devils stick to it and then can be removed.

Dawn

Thanks guys. I didn't think they really liked like spider mites, but they also don't seem to quite fit the description of whiteflies (the description I found describes them almost like a worm when they are in the mobile stage, then they don't move really in the later stages). I remember seeing something about some sort of soil mite (that is supposed to be harmless and possibly beneficial) while I was googling about what I could have, and it seems to fit at least part of the description, but I'm not sure.

The soap did seem to help some. I'm not seeing as many today, so maybe I'll water with it again. Does any soap possibly work, or just dish soap? I buy a foaming soap made out of goat's milk (this one is Peppermint scented) at the Farmer's Market that I use for my hands, and I wondered if it would be a better or a worse option than the Dawn dish soap I used.

Other than the soap/water and DE, what can I use on edibles? I'm mostly seeing them in the dirt in my herb pots. The herbs aren't yet big enough to harvest, so I'm willing to use something that has to be applied well before harvesting for food, but I'm just not sure what my options are. Walmart and Tractor Supply are probably my most likely places to find something to buy, but I've not yet looked at either and so don't know what the options are. I do remember seeing pesticides at Walmart, but the ones I remember noticing are definitely not what I'd want to use on a plant I plan to eventually eat from.

They are definitely in the pots with my Munstead Strain Lavender and Chinese Chives. I haven't actually noticed them with the Rosemary, Emily Basil, Broad Lead Sage, Common Chives, or Wild Zaatar Oregano, but obviously that doesn't mean they aren't there. The pots are all together by the window.

It needs to be soap, not dish detergent. What we commonly call dish soap actually is detergent and detergent can kill or damage plants much more readily than soap does. he damage can be invisible and leave you wondering why your plant's health is declining, or it can be very visible, especially on plants with very tender foliage, like tomato plants. The foaming goat milk soap you buy would be great if you want to mix up your own. You always should test a homemade spray on a small portion of a plant first, wait 24-48 hours to see if damage results, and then use that same formulation on the rest of your plant or plants if it didn't do any damage to the test area. Any product that is a gentle soap would be fine. I use the Dr. Bronner's line of soaps that all are castile-based inside our house and I use the peppermint soap outdoors to make ants move a pathway so that it isn't running through an area where we walk. Right now I have his lavendar soap, tea tree oil soap and peppermint soap....the liquid versions, which are highly concentrated and last forever.

For the garden I use a commercial horticultural soap. I always have and always will. These are precisely formulated and tested and, if used as labeled and with careful attention to ensure you don't use them in high temperatures, they will not harm your plants. Mixing up a spray or drench using a detergent is a little like playing Russian roulette. It might not harm your plants most of the time, but then again on any given occasion that you use it, it might. Why risk it?

Soap sprays work by penetrating the insects' waxy cuticle, causing them to desiccate and die. Well, guess what? Plants have a waxy cuticle too (some types more so than others) and soap sprays can harm plants the same way it harms insects. With a commercial insecticidal soap products, the companies have done everything they can to precisely formulate the product so it kills the insects and not the plants. They've tested their formulations. They know how much soap is enough and how much is too much. All that is reflected in their label directions. When you mix up a soap formula at home that precision is gone. No one, including the manufacturer of dish detergents, ever has tested their product to see what ratio of detergent to water gives you a safe spray that kills insects and not plants, so a person is just "guessing" when they use a detergent or, for that matter, even when mixing up a homemade insecticidal soap using actual soap.

I can't help wondering if those little insects are young aphids that haven't reached full size yet. Normally herbs are relatively pest-free when grown outdoors. That is because herbs don't have many pest problems and the few pests that show up are easily handled by the beneficial insects that are around. However, when you grow herbs indoors without any beneficial insects around, they are prone to being attacked by mites, aphids, mealy bugs, scale and whiteflies.

I've never seen little bugs like you have in any of my containers, indoors or out, and I've been gardening all my life. They might be some little soil-dwelling pest that doesn't hurt anything, but it is hard to tell. If you aren't seeing them up on the plants themselves, then the only damage they might be doing is to the roots if they are doing any damage at all.

Be sure you aren't keeping the soil too wet. Wet soil seems to encourage both pests and diseases.

There are some organic products that can be applied to the soil as a drench to kill insects in the soil, but I'd hate to use them if I didn't know for a fact that the pests I was seeing were indeed doing some sort of damage. Spinosad is an example of one such product. I don't spray it on my plants as a spray because it is broad-spectrum but I use it in a pelleted form in two different products----one for snails/slugs.sow bugs and pill bugs, and the other for fire ants.

I generally don't keep many insecticides around (or, actually, I keep them on a shelf in the potting shed but I rarely actually use them). Almost everything you could find on that shelf in my potting shed today came from Wal-Mart or Tractor Supply, or occasionally from Lowe's or Home Depot. There's only a couple of organic products I have to order online and have shipped because they are not readily available.

Now, if you are seeing those little bugs that are in your soil actually move onto the plants, you'd have to do something because at that point you'd know they were likely to damage your plants. I just ignore insects if they aren't doing major damage. It is impossible to have plants that are insect free unless, perhaps, you're using heavy-duty systemic pesticides of a synthetic nature.

I grow the herbs you listed (and many others) outdoors and most of them are in the ground and not in pots, and insects don't bother them enough for me to even notice the damage. Do I see insects on the plants? Sure. But I don't see anything other than the most minor damage. In fact, a lot of my herbs are used as companion plants to repel or confuse pest insects. I can't help thinking that if you could put the plants outside for a few hours a day, the pests might disappear on their own, but that's just a guess.

Hope this helps,

Dawn