First pictures are of the carnage of mites after Hot Shot Nopest Strips, the only thing that seemed to ACTUALLY work for me at all, really. Even after dunking them in Nukem and monterey garden insect spray, the No-pest strips did it. The "corpses" were sill clear whitish green with black dots on their sides before the strips, making me believe they weren't corpses but just paralyzed or slowed or something. After the no-pest strips, they're all shriveled and orange. Interesting. The pictures I'm about to show are taken through a jewelers loupe called Kind Scopes, they've got 2 leds and a backlight in them, and cost profoundly cheaper than other shitter less than 60x lenses. I took the lens, then took my iPhone 5 (lol) and zoomed in on the iPhone. I peered it through the lens and managed to hold it steady enough with the plant matter on the floor, to snap pictures hahaha. Here are my results. I plan on taking many more of these in the future. The first set are before spraying with insecticide to try and kill eggs, the last are 1 clear dry before spray shot, and the rest of the obvious failed attempt to kill eggs, as these things are... INVINCIBLE. The eggs, when dead, by however a few of them died... Turn orange, the same color as the mites and it looks like an amber trichome. (Maybe I'll take pics of them tomorrow.)
If you're not in flower, perhaps try insecticidal soap sprays to the underside of the leaves? That worked for me when I had mites. Mind you I had my mites too close to harvest and ended up with crap I wouldn't smoke at all.
I'd also sprayed Harpin protein before the no pest strips but not on the underside of leaf. Hopefully a SAR immune response will help strengthen against the mites. Though it sounds insane, i've heard studies done that show higher yield with the presence of some predators. They haven't wreaked physical damage yet (though the dead thrips from last week did), but I still want them at least mostly gone. I'm planning to blast with UV during cola build to lighten pigmentation and elongate trichome, which might also create a different SAR to help combat bugs (and increase bag appeal.) Will let y'all know.
Do make sure to update us! And yeah, spraying on the underside of the leaves seems to be the best way to kill the mites, as that's where they seem to congregate, instead of being on top. Why, I don't exactly know. Q.Q
I just don't think it'll help with the eggs and will waste my cash. It'll probably kill em (as my stuff probably did too) but i'm in the beginning of flower and not concerned about the toxicity of my no pest strips yet. When i get my hands on more cash I'll think about trying the soap and the mighty wash and cop are it to the nukem and the green spray i tried. I see you like strawberry cough? I'm going to cross cannalope with 2 different cuts of cough and 1 cut of orange velvet soon, will let you know how it goes if interested. Also gunna make some f1 hybrids out that cannalope saliva from some black cherry soda and obama indicas maybe blue city diesel too. Cannalope has that coffee and melon smell, should go crazy with the cherry/orange/strawberry/grape smells.
Yeah I definitely focused on the underside of leafs. But my plants are so large it's impossible to cover all so the no pest strips do, as well as the soil. I'm just putting them in front of the fans and leaving them for an hour every 4 days until all generations of hatched mites have no chance of reproducing. It's not organic but idc.
But does it kill the eggs? It'll be my next preventative regardless, i hear it has electrical charges that zapp them instead of killing with PH or poison.
Mighty wash works good but does not kill eggs. You will need to treat and then again in 3 days. Late in flower, there are not a lot of options. Keep your temps down (they like temps above 80) and reduce the light to 11 hours will help slow down their breeding. For $20 you could order like 6000 lady bugs from amazon and they will eat them. Those little fuckers! I hate them. You could make the pepper spray too.