The 91% iso alcohol did kill them just wasn’t immediate but what I found out and will be using for instant kill moving forward is simple Castile soap or Br Bronners soap which is Potassium salts of fatty acids…all natural and is instant kill and cheap too.
I haven’t tried the milk mix. After finding what I did using the simple natural soap and water that’s what I’ll be using as of now moving forward. This is also supposed to kill WPM as well as other insects.
Between the two of you, and a handful of others, we have some serious spider mite knowledge in this forum.
Lol I’m sure none by choice but through necessity
Dam mites
We will be long gone and the mites will still be around
Truth. We’d more likely wipe out cancer.
I think these damned mites are nearly indestructable because they’d never get cancer or whole hosts of ailments from consuming cannabis nectar!
I make soap with lye - sodium hydroxide, will try diluting the shaving into liquid to spray. I don’t make liquid soap because it uses potassium hydroxide and the process with high temp and pressure scares me.
I had half gallon of expired whole milk but it still looks good, no curdle, to extract pounded up garlic-pepper juice. I just used about a cup or two for it at a time then diluted with water and ended up using about 6:1 water:milk. The plants look pretty happy. I’m not sure how long it will be before harvest - can’t tell, so I’m not feeding them anything right now. I also experimented with night time spraying. I got a few moths so probably stopped them from laying eggs on my buds too.
Also baked some zucchini bread and added young buds that I trimmed off, about a fistful. I didn’t want to use too much remembering how stoned I got after eating stir-fried leaves. It turned out really yummy and I just got a little buzz, hardly noticeable. It’s better than having to eat it before bedtime if I get more than a little buzz.
I’m gonna live for EVAR! lol
Consuming its ash isn’t the same, lol!
Just for a heads up and another remedy for spider mites. I ordered some green lacewing beneficials. I am hoping to control them with these as I too cannot get a hold on them. I kill them daily. They haven’t made it to the plants but once but they are persistent and I want them dead. I will update this forum as I see results. Peace.
Cool
Let us know @HTCMG how things go with them as I still have them and I’ve tried many things to eradicate them.
Latest is Flying Skull nuke em and like all the others still haven’t eradicated them but just keeping the population down.
I’ve found that they reside in the soil and when you water they come out up top and play. Keeping them off of and killing them from the leaves are the easy part. The hard part is soil removal and on and under the pots too.
Haven’t needed to spray the plants leaves for quite some time as I’ve kept them off by removing tie downs and keeping DE at the base of the stalks just a pain when watering as have to replace it if it gets wet from watering which for the 6 in 5 gallon pots with straw bedding is no problem but the 9 in 1 gallon gets DE wet every time and those are needing watered almost every day because they are overdue for bigger homes.
My next try may be using predatory mites that once they consume all the veggy mites they will consume each other so in the end no mites.
If the lacewings work out for you maybe I’ll give that a go instead.
Been a frustrating yet good learning experience over the last 2 months. Has hampered my grow in the veg tent somewhat by trying to eradicate them before up potting 9 of them still in 1 gallon pots but I can’t really wait much longer as they have really outgrown their pots and looks like I’ll be using the veg tent to flower 15 plants. Gonna be tight but don’t want to contaminate my other tent that’s in flower.
I can imagine. In the past I have been hit so hard and fast that I give up and try again later. I tried the lady bugs and every spray known to man also. The green lacewings are one of the only things I haven’t tried. There are a couple of other predatory insects too. I haven’t tried any of them but a professional grower uses them and one other exclusively and had no problems. Others (professional growers) I’ve seen have in essence “clean rooms” some might think ridiculous until you get hit by them. My guess is the guys with the clean rooms have been decimated before. Any way. they should be here tomorrow or next day. I haven’t seen any mites in my area in about 12 hours so we’ll see.
I got the Lace wings yesterday, they came in a package about the size of a seed package you see in the store. The problem is your supposed to hang it (the pouch) from a branch and the package is taller than the plant. Instructions say “not to lay package on its side”. Solution from Wifey was to get dixie cups and cut them in half or so and place them under the canopy and that will allow them to still walk up them stem and turn into the flying ones. From what I understand the larvae eat as much or more of the bugs than the adults.
I’m excited to see how well they might work for you!
Keep us in the loop
All I can say is that if I didn’t have bugs before, I do now. I hope they didn’t send the food without the lacewings.
I didn’t see any of the larvae and I contacted the company. They told me that it can take 7 to 10 days for them to hatch, this was news to me. I thought they were supposed to hatch in about 3 days, so I am still waiting to see them hatch. The company also said it would be difficult to see them when they first hatch. The company suggests you do multiple applications once a month. I haven’t seen any bug pressure but then I haven’t seen the green lacewings either. I will update when something cool happens. Peace
Man been a while since I’ve been here. Update is inconclusive. I say this because I got a second round of the lacewings and this morning noticed spider mites not in the grow tent but all around like the scene in I am Legend where Will Smith had to pull the trigger on his Zombie eradicator setup. I pulled the plug on a Dr. Doom fogger and wasted those fools, of course I wasted all my beneficials too. I’ll start over with a mite that is supposed to go into overdrive eating them. I haven’t used it yet because they don’t like temps above 90 and I hit that for moments throughout the day.
Something I have tried and it seemed to work is Mosquito Bits
When I applied Capt Jacks sprinkle the bits on the media and lightly water in and is supposed to kill the larvae
A few days ago found a few mites and sprayed with MITE MASSACRE and see none anywhere since. And did the bits also.
My early review on MITE MASSACRE is it appears to work. It’s not insecticide so mites can’t build up immunity to it Jmo
Mosquito bits work for fungus gnat larvae and as far as I know won’t do anything for mites.
The other product you used is an oil based product and will kill mites that come in direct contact with the spray by suffocating them.
As far as being effective in breaking their reproductive cycle such as eggs etc and mites living in the soil if the mix doesn’t reach them they will come back.
Keep an eye out for them right after you water using magnifying device watching the top of soil for movement. I’ll bet if they were there before application that they are still there.
Stay vigilant because they are very resilient and hard to eradicate.
Hope this help
I would have to say that the green lacewing experiment was a bust. I found a small group of spider mites on one of the plans. I sprayed thoroughly with Captain Jacks and I am going to order some predatory mites that are supposed to eat like no tomorrow. I was waiting for temps to go down below 90 and our temps here are close to that now so I will order on Monday I should receive them by Thursday. In the mean time I will just spray as I see them on the plants. No damage yet.
Not sure where you’ll be ordering them but this link details various predatory mites as well as their environmental requirements
Hope this helps and keep us informed as to your progress
