Ok so I've been growing for about 10 years now and it wasn't until last year I ever had any problems with spider mites. So last year just after a week long power outage from a hurricane I noticed spider mites on my plants. I was already over half way done budding my plants do at the time I just let it ride and harvested with them still on tho I did spray some water and organic crap on them to try to at least get rid of the webs. So anyways after that I cleaned out my closet really good and tried to sanitize it the best I could. So right now I have 4 girls begging under the 400 watt mh bulb with an 18/6 hours light cycle. 3 plants are clones from a mother I did earlier and are like 3 feet tall in planters nice and bushy and the other is a smaller female cotton candy lush. I am using a hotshot vapor stick and have been sleeping on my couch and I've been spraying my plants with permethrin. I am basically slowly baking my plants with the hotshot because I turned off my fans and closed the window so it is a little hotter then I'd like but I just looked and even with all that they are still thriving, moving, and breeding. I can't bud these plants until I get these spider mites under control and I can't even sleep on my bed lol. Any help would be apretiatted.
Oh and I was soaking the undersides of the leaves with the pesticide spray. These things are really hard to kill.
I raised humidity to 60% in my room and dropped the temps to 68-70 degrees,then I sprayed with Neem oil for three days in a row (right before turning lights off).The mites like heat and dryness because they breathe through their skin (you probably know this).This worked great.Lots of good links on here with more details....hope this helps.
Ok so it looks like they're just getting worse. Do you think I should add another vapor strip into my grow room. Although my closet is like 2 feet wide 5 feet long and like 9 feet tall (that an estimate), I have to leave the door open so I don't cook my plants alive, the rest of my room is problem like 12 by 15. Do you think a second strip would help any or would I be better off turning the fans back on opening my window and just use neem oil or something to try to kill them?
Would some of those fly strips help? You know the sticky ones? They'd get stuck on there and it would at least kill some of them. Anyone tried that before?
thats what my friend dose at the bottom of his stalks so the cant climb up really works or even spray the bottom of the stalk... so they cant worm there way up. also lady bugs work great and help your plant...
i found um on my girls a few months ago 2 days before harvest on one plant. hit them with dr doom spider mite stuff and it seemed to work, u need to retreat every 7 days for the rest of the girls till theyre gone. now im spraying every few weeks on those in veg as well as flowering ones.
Just fought a war with some spider mites using mite x spraying every 3 to 5 days til they were gone it seems to dry fast and is organic and can be used up to the day you harvest.
Ok so I bought mite x and neem oil. I applied the mite x and after 12 when the lights go out I'm going to spray them down with neem oil. I swept up all of the dead leaves in the bud room and tried to clean it up some. I am going to switch over to the 400 watt enhanced spectrum has bulb and switch the te down to 12/12. This isn't what I would have done ideally and wish I could have fully eliminated them before flowering. But if I wait any longer they might not live till the end of budding. I'm gonna have to hook my camera up to my computer and get some photos. Anyways I have 7 little plants in veg all different strains and most were feminized seeds. I've never used fem seeds so in hoping that they work out. So the plants in veg are like a month old but have no spider mites but would it be ok to spray then a little with the mite x to try to keep them like that?
hot shot no pest strips work, but they have to be in there for a week. It doesnt just kill them outright. Are you venting outside of your house? I use the pest strips but I also vent the air out of the bldg, not back into my living space. If you find that this wont work, there is always magic wash, I know people say it doesnt work, but it did for me, and all the people I know who used it. Exspensive but you can use it at anytime during flower.
Since you already tried hot shot no pest strips (a chemical), i would suggest that you use abamectine or ivermectine (ivermectine can be applied at later stages too compared to abamectine).
There's a newer product out called sns. Fully organic and safe to use even in flower Upto 3 days before harvest. Ha a terrible infestation. 2 treatments and it put a gigantic dent in em. Hit my veggers with neem, and worked em all out. If you can get some sns I'd give it a try. Heard azitrol works great but takes some time as it makes the newly hatched mites sterile so you have to let em love their life cycle.
I just started using the HotShot Strip in my grow, enclosed space at week 5 in flower. Terrible infestation came out of no where (yea right, it was the basil i brought in from outside :/ ). Either way, after three-4 hour treatments (alternating days), i thought they were all taken care of. I just found a nice little patch of a few of them. It seems after i sprayed the pepper spray in there, they moved to the tops of the leaves. Eitherway i believe these are noobies freshly hatched. So I'll be performing another 3 treatments this week.
Hot shots make for a great preventative guys but its definately not goin to quell an infestation on their own.
Not too far into flower though! Not exactly sure on the dates but I wouldn't use it once the buds start moving (after week 4).
If you have to spray late in flowering make sure you have some fans directly on the plants and good airflow to prevent mold and rot
I had the hotshot in for 2 weeks and there worse then they were 2 weeks ago. Normally when flowering I open a window ( or in the summer I throw in an ac unit to keep things cool. I also always run a box fan regardless and I slide open my closet door at 6 am when the light kicks on and I close it everyday at 6 pm when the light shuts off. Believe it or not this keeps my room cool enough and keeps enough air circulating around that I have never had any problems with temperature or air flow. The thing is when u put In the hotshot I was under the inpretion that I for it to work I had to make kind of like a gas chamber effect. So for the 2 weeks I closed the window and turned off the no fan in my bud room. A lot of good that did because the bugs just flourished under these conditions. So now I just sprayed neem oil and mite x for the first time and I'm going to try some more of the organic solutions to the problem. I think my spider mites might have a natural resistance to pesticide because the hotshot and that other chemical spray did virtually nothing.