Spider mites, first time encounter..please help.

so the gf thought it was smart to bring her jalapeno into my grow tent because of winter..it was infested with spidermites. thankfully i only had seedlings in there.

I made a dish soap and neem oil spray. and soaked everything down with it. i then took the tent and stuffed it outside to freeze( -25C northren canada). is there anything else i can do.. i even cleaned off my lights and chucked all my grow buckets.

the jalapeno got left in the cold to die.

Burn your grow down and start over... Jk the little bastards can be hard to get rid of. For me neem seemed to help but then they were just plant jumping. This was in my greenhouse at the end of season. The cold finally killed everything, plants and all. I wish I knew a way to get rid of them without harsh chemicals. But I'm not so sure that's possible. Good luck man.

im mostly worried about the damn eggs. i dont wanna start another grow just to have them show up again. so hopefully drowning the tent in soap and oil then frezzeing it will kill em. ill also do another round of neem and soap after it freezes just to make sure.

The eggs are the real problem. If they keep reproducing you're not getting rid of them. Freezing them sounds like a good idea.

macsnax said:

The eggs are the real problem. If they keep reproducing you're not getting rid of them. Freezing them sounds like a good idea.

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I read that spider mites simply become dormant in frozen temps. Myth or fact, I don’t know. When in veg, I used azamax, 4 treatments in 10 days. Clean grow area thoroughly. If still concerned, do a neem maintenance every 7 days. They do suck to get rid of.

Your probably right, but I don't think the eggs will survive freezing. I'm just speculating, I've been wrong before.

C

macsnax said:

Your probably right, but I don't think the eggs will survive freezing. I'm just speculating, I've been wrong before.

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ool, thanks.

ill give it a shot. i think the best thing i could do. is clean the tent as best i can with neem oil and soap. then put a sacifice plant in there and see if they come back. if all else fails, ditch the tent and move to a new grow area.. i just dont wanna have to spend another 300 bucks on a tent.

HolyGhost23 said:

ill give it a shot. i think the best thing i could do. is clean the tent as best i can with neem oil and soap. then put a sacifice plant in there and see if they come back. if all else fails, ditch the tent and move to a new grow area.. i just dont wanna have to spend another 300 bucks on a tent.

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Worst come to worst, leave it outside and bug bomb it. Then clean the piss out of it to get rid of chemical residue. I don't know if that shit will stay in the fabric? You would think you could clean mylar pretty well.

You could spray it down with a dilution of spinosad or pyrethrum - Southern Ag sells some pretty cheap concentrate bottles.

I use my garden hose with a sprayer, I cover the soil/pot with a garbage bag and hose it down.....You could take your plants outside and do this, sometimes I lie the plant down

Those little bastards are nothing to screw around with.

Spray with your neem solution every three days for a week and a half. I spray all my plants weekly in veg as a preventative measure and haven't had mites in years. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, ground zero for those nasty spider mites. Fought them for years until I started treating all my plants in veg regardless of whether they had mites or not. Nothing goes into the flower tent without a final spray.

If I get mites again, it's chop and bleach time.

If it's worth it to you, you can buy predatory mites on ebay for about $40 shipped. They only eat spider mites and then die when all the bad mites are gone.

That's just controlling them, you're never going to eradicate them that way. There is a chemical you can buy but it's too expensive. There comes a point when a price gets so high, that it's best to just go without to prevent them from making that much of a profit.

If just grow equipment then don't use neem. Just put a mask and gloves on. Then mix water bleach (lots of bleach), spray tent inside and out. Leave it for a day then spray and wipe down inside of tent and all equipment, let dry. You can then spray inside with something like Mite wash or green cleaner just for added assurance.