Spider mites why and how the fook

So around my 8plants I have chilies and tomatoes and 2 cuttings for the garden soon
just noticed they are riddled with spider mites

but there isn’t one mite in my main 8plants down the middle there trees but hungry and deficient yet they only eating young baby plants ??

im removing the infected plants but what can I do for my main crop ? Spinosad ? Neem ? I’m freaking itching allover and freaking out I was about to flip flower

2cent said:

So around my 8plants I have chilies and tomatoes and 2 cuttings for the garden soon
just noticed they are riddled with spider mites

but there isn’t one mite in my main 8plants down the middle there trees but hungry and deficient yet they only eating young baby plants ??

im removing the infected plants but what can I do for my main crop ? Spinosad ? Neem ? I’m freaking itching allover and freaking out I was about to flip flower

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What I use and recommend for cannabis and even other types of plants, which are in a vegetative state ( never flowering) is a solution/slurry of diamataceous earth in a sraying container . Due to the settling out of the DE in the water mixture to the bottom of the spray container , it's very important to keep shaking vigorously to keep the DE particles evenly distributed, suspended in the mixture while spraying .
The result of not keeping the mixture agitated is the plugging off of the hose and
spraying nozzle . I don't use any special ratio of DE to water, I just avoid making the slurry not to heavy-duty. This will "dirty-up" the leaves a bit, but after it knocks the shit out of any insect with an exoskeleton ( usually with in two days or less ) you can rinse off much of the slurry which has deposited on the leaves. This has never
Interfered with the flowering stage of the plant .

StonedGardener said:

What I use and recommend for cannabis and even other types of plants, which are in a vegetative state ( never flowering) is a solution/slurry of diamataceous earth in a sraying container . Due to the settling out of the DE in the water mixture to the bottom of the spray container , it's very important to keep shaking vigorously to keep the DE particles evenly distributed, suspended in the mixture while spraying .
The result of not keeping the mixture agitated is the plugging off of the hose and
spraying nozzle . I don't use any special ratio of DE to water, I just avoid making the slurry not to heavy-duty. This will "dirty-up" the leaves a bit, but after it knocks the shit out of any insect with an exoskeleton ( usually with in two days or less ) you can rinse off much of the slurry which has deposited on the leaves. This has never
Interfered with the flowering stage of the plant .

Click to expand...

Really ? ive heard that the de becomes inactive when wet ?

de wont become inactive, it wont float about in a big dust storm if wet. we use it as a dust bath for the chickensalong with sand.
ive never herd of it being used on the little fuckers b4, but sounds logical to me.
no harm in trying and if your growing in doil, put a layer down on top of yoiur soil to stop soil gnats too

think last time I had them I used predatory insects.. cleaned up the problem within about a week.

i think you want a two pronged or three pronged attack,
first off, remove all non cannabis plants
1, use spinosad sp? or make up a neem oil and dish detergent spray, then wait a few days,
2, give it a few days and use some SB SPRAY
SB Plant Invigorator and Bug Killer - 500ml Spray Bottle


3, GET SOME PREDITOR WASPS oops.
Amblyseius californicus Predators
wait untill someone who has used the spinosaid sp? as ive never used it and anything else may not be nessesary. but after the SB Spray, its safe to use preditor mites

I've had spider mites a few times. Regarding the "why" factor, they hitch a ride, either on you or on a plant you brought into the grow space.

I've definitely noticed that they prefer some plants more than others. Our tomatoes outside always have them by late summer, but they don't seem to like the squash and cucumbers very much. With weed, even different strains/phenos they seem to like more or less, I guess depending on the terpenes they like the taste of some plants better than others or something...

Spider mites eat ammonia nitrate. When Cannabis runs out of sugars it breaks its glycine down into serine and ammonium is produced. Plants infected with spider mites are not producing enough photosynthates, have been fed too much Nitrate/ammonia, or are not converting ammonia into amino acids fast enough.

There's your 3 prong approach with zero pesticides.

1) Get more sugar into the plant. Plants make glucose and fructose through photosynthesis. Boiled table sugar + citric acid = glucose and fructose. Or sucrose + invertase (produced by soil microbes).

2) Stop feeding any form of nitrogen that isn't an amino acid or peptide. Spider mites do not eat nitrogen that's already in the form of proteins.

3) Apply a product containing boron citrate, magnesium sulfate, sodium molybdate, zinc citrate, and nickel citrate. This will speed up conversion of ammonia into amino proteins.

Fuck pesticides and people who spray them.

Beauvida when given N in a "organic form" it is converted to NH4 and that is converted to Nitrate in the media by microbes. The plant takes up NH4 and No3 whether you give it NH4 or No3 directly or in a "organic form". Putting sugars into the media may help the microbes that are converting Organic N to NH4 and No3 in the media but other than that it is useless to the plant.

BeauVida said:

Spider mites eat ammonia nitrate.

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Source for this?

BeauVida said:

Spider mites eat ammonia nitrate. When Cannabis runs out of sugars it breaks its glycine down into serine and ammonium is produced. Plants infected with spider mites are not producing enough photosynthates, have been fed too much Nitrate/ammonia, or are not converting ammonia into amino acids fast enough.

There's your 3 prong approach with zero pesticides.

1) Get more sugar into the plant. Plants make glucose and fructose through photosynthesis. Boiled table sugar + citric acid = glucose and fructose. Or sucrose + invertase (produced by soil microbes).

2) Stop feeding any form of nitrogen that isn't an amino acid or peptide. Spider mites do not eat nitrogen that's already in the form of proteins.

3) Apply a product containing boron citrate, magnesium sulfate, sodium molybdate, zinc citrate, and nickel citrate. This will speed up conversion of ammonia into amino proteins.

Fuck pesticides and people who spray them.

Click to expand...

There low on feed and n
i use molasses em1 weekly
and don’t do that to the new plants that are injected maybe that’s why the canna doesn’t have any sugar foilar incoming haha

StonedGardener said:

What I use and recommend for cannabis and even other types of plants, which are in a vegetative state ( never flowering) is a solution/slurry of diamataceous earth in a sraying container . Due to the settling out of the DE in the water mixture to the bottom of the spray container , it's very important to keep shaking vigorously to keep the DE particles evenly distributed, suspended in the mixture while spraying .
The result of not keeping the mixture agitated is the plugging off of the hose and
spraying nozzle . I don't use any special ratio of DE to water, I just avoid making the slurry not to heavy-duty. This will "dirty-up" the leaves a bit, but after it knocks the shit out of any insect with an exoskeleton ( usually with in two days or less ) you can rinse off much of the slurry which has deposited on the leaves. This has never
Interfered with the flowering stage of the plant .

Click to expand...

This didn't work for me in 2020, which I remember as, "the great spider mite plague." I know it's nuts but I swear COVID knocked out my plants' immune systems, too. Papaya is susceptible at the best of times, so I ate a big loss. Spider mites can be avoided by using living soil, I find. You may see them roaming the stems and stalks, but they can't eat a high-brix plant as it's too spicy. So I spoil them and NEVER use chemicals or salt fertilizers. Just pig shit, straw, belly wool, vermiculite, perlite, greensand, cow shit, worm shit, human shit, compost, peat moss, and molasses. Write those down if you want body builder plants from Hell. Bugs can't so much as sniff them too long without getting grossed out.

Edit: Almost forgot to mention the bonemeal. I know it's overkill, but that's my specialty.

2cent said:

Really ? ive heard that the de becomes inactive when wet ?

Click to expand...

It most certainly does but it becomes dry, very quickly after spraying the suspension on the plants . Why the hell would I use it and always get
fantastic results !

2cent said:

Really ? ive heard that the de becomes inactive when wet ?

Click to expand...

Correct it needs to be dry.

I know its not what you want to hear but a miticide and or no pest strips is only way to get rid of them. If you cant bring yourself to do that cull everything and start over, you will just be wasting your time with all these other so called remedys. Im sure all the organic nuts will hate this but its the truth.

BeauVida said:

Spider mites eat ammonia nitrate. When Cannabis runs out of sugars it breaks its glycine down into serine and ammonium is produced. Plants infected with spider mites are not producing enough photosynthates, have been fed too much Nitrate/ammonia, or are not converting ammonia into amino acids fast enough.

There's your 3 prong approach with zero pesticides.

1) Get more sugar into the plant. Plants make glucose and fructose through photosynthesis. Boiled table sugar + citric acid = glucose and fructose. Or sucrose + invertase (produced by soil microbes).

2) Stop feeding any form of nitrogen that isn't an amino acid or peptide. Spider mites do not eat nitrogen that's already in the form of proteins.

3) Apply a product containing boron citrate, magnesium sulfate, sodium molybdate, zinc citrate, and nickel citrate. This will speed up conversion of ammonia into amino proteins.

Fuck pesticides and people who spray them.

Click to expand...

You my friend need to stop speculating about stuff you don't understand or have any experience in using and actually start growing?

You can't force sugar in to the plant and mixing Citric acid with sugar will do next to nothing in terms of positive affect against pests. The right approach to use Citric acid is as a contact killer in combination with a surfactant, dish soap or polysrobate/tween20.

Adding foliar fed to a plant that's already overfed will make the lock out even worse. You're right about feeding less but I don't understand how you magically know the plant has nitrogen toxicity without any pictures or point of reference? Crystal ball?

BeauVida said:

Spider mites eat ammonia nitrate. When Cannabis runs out of sugars it breaks its glycine down into serine and ammonium is produced. Plants infected with spider mites are not producing enough photosynthates, have been fed too much Nitrate/ammonia, or are not converting ammonia into amino acids fast enough.

There's your 3 prong approach with zero pesticides.

1) Get more sugar into the plant. Plants make glucose and fructose through photosynthesis. Boiled table sugar + citric acid = glucose and fructose. Or sucrose + invertase (produced by soil microbes).

2) Stop feeding any form of nitrogen that isn't an amino acid or peptide. Spider mites do not eat nitrogen that's already in the form of proteins.

3) Apply a product containing boron citrate, magnesium sulfate, sodium molybdate, zinc citrate, and nickel citrate. This will speed up conversion of ammonia into amino proteins.

Fuck pesticides and people who spray them.

Click to expand...

Whoa, bro science at it's best!

I've had good results with Grower's Ally Spider Mite Control....