I still believe in ladybugs they have yet to let me down
3 Likes
Just more random musing, or maybe obsession, about these mites. When I looked yesterday and saw them covering everything I was shocked. I donāt remember seeing them the day before. The day before, I transferred some worm castings from my bin that I knew had some H. Miles and likely had nematodes as well.
Today Iām thinking about it. They look scared and running away like flood victims on the roof of their houses. Iām fantasizing about them running in fear of the H. Miles. 
I would love to film that.
3 Likes
Hi again Uncle_Al,
If theyāre available then why not!
My question is this: if all this spraying talk applies to a nuisible parasite doesnāt it also concern its predators as well??
Good day, have fun!! 
1 Like
Stuff we use promotes beneficials and deters pests.
1 Like
Salutations ReikoX,
Then have you considered alternative scenarios?
The eggs have hatched i supposeā¦
Or maybe theyāre just enjoying their brand-new sundeck!
ā¦
Good day, have fun!!
4 Likes
No mites can build resistance to any of the following due to their mode of action:
-
Oil sprays. 2 TB refined Neem or ag oil per gallon of water. Oil sprays coat the mites and suffocate them. Raw and refined Neem oil both work well, as does agricultural mineral oil, and food grade mineral oil. Oil sprays work to kill all stages of mites and their eggs as well. You need to beware of spraying oils above 80 def. F. though. Also do not use canola oil. I have burned plants using canola, even though UC Davis recommended it for mites. It was a hot day though, and that can be a problem with any oil sprays.
-
Soap/spreader sprays. Mix rate depends on the soap used. Soap sprays lower the surface tension of water and basically drowns them. Soap sprays also kills eggs and helps mix and spread oil sprays, and works well with them in a dual action mode. Contrary to what is commonly posted on these sites, Dawn and other dish soaps are not recommended for use on plants. Dishwashing āsoapsā are almost always detergents, and not soaps. You do not want to use detergent on your plants.
-
Sugar and molasses. 1 cup of sugar per gallon of water. Adult and larval stages of mites cannot tolerate high levels of sugar, and they basically explode from osmotic pressure when exposed to sugar water. This does not work to kill the eggs though. I prefer using refined white sugar, as it is simpler to mix and less messy, though the residue is sticky. Sugar is also absorbed by plant leaves and it will increase the brix, which is a good thing. And sugar drippings will be gobbled up by the fungus in the soil. It may attract sugar ants, so you may want to use Tanglefoot as well. See belowā¦
-
Hydrogen peroxide. 1 cup 3& H2O2 per gallon of water. H2O2 is an oxygenating ābleachā that releases the extra oxygen atom on contact with surfaces. It basically burns the mites in all stages on contact. Some consider this toxic, but H2O2 breaks down into water and oxygen. In my trials, H2O2 does not seem to kill mite eggs.
-
Tanglefoot. This is a thick goop that comes in a tube that you smear in a one inch swath around the base stems of plants. It basically traps mites and ants and other bugs and they cannot escape. Mites can travel surprisingly fast for being so small, and they tend to run to the base of a plant when they are agitated. This also keeps ants from foraging on your plants, and farming other insects like aphids, mealy bugs and scale on your plants, which they will do if given the chance.
Using H2O2 with sugar is a good combination, and the plants love it. I add refined Neem oil to the H2O2 and sugar spray for a triple combination shot that is highly effective. Cannabis plants also love the triple spray, and respond positively to it. I also add Tanglefoot goop to the base stems to keep the mites from escaping or moving onto my plants from the soil. I also use refined Neem spray as a preventative for mites and PM at a rate of 100:1 (3.5 TB per gallon) in a bi-weekly basis regardless of whether I see any mites or PM or not. I assume that they are in my garden on other plants, or in the wind. I do not rely on beneficials, crystals, or mystical spirits to protect my plants. Nor wind, high velocity water spraying, or prayers.
Now the drawback to all of the above is that they are contact sprays, and you have to hit every part of the plant with them to be effective. They need to be saturated and you need to spray repeatedly. But the sprays are all organic, and in most cases they are non toxic. Sugar, mineral oil and H2O2 can be used up to the day of harvesting. They are also CHEAP! And they all can be used often and repeatedly, as the bugs cannot build tolerances to them due to their modes of action. In the many studies done that I have read about, these sprays are not as effective as miticides like Avid/abamectin, azadirachtin, etc. but those sprays are only good for a few applications because mites can and do build resistance to them. So you have to rotate their diet when using them. If I get a bad outbreak of mites, I reach for the Aza or Avid for fast knockdown. I only use Avid if I am 45 days or more from harvest time. Its not organic, but I am not an organic or commercial licensed grower yet.
5 Likes
Salutations BigSur,
Ah yes, my apologies: i keep refering to neem-resistant spidermites (as those in my fridge onceā¦), etc., but the OP actually has another type of nuisance.
Anyway if a deterent agent penetrates the parasiteās eggs walls then thatās good enough i suppose. Meanwhile iād lower room temperature in hope it slows them down, because otherwise i fear the warfare shall be over next weekā¦ But i keep thinking of The Borg again: a true obsession!..
Good day, have fun!!
1 Like
Mite resistance is not to the oil in Neem oils, but to the azadirachtin in raw Neem oil. Raw unrefined Neem oil has a lot of active compounds in it, including azadirachtin. Many of the other Neem components have yet to be fully studied or understood, but some are thought to be miticides as well. Aza is extracted from Raw Neem oil by processing and the resulting oil is called refined Neem oil, or 70% Neem oil, or Triple Action Neem oil. Its confusing, as there is also Neem cake and other Neem products out there. And Neem plants are called Azadirachta indica . Many consider Aza sprays as Neem as well, which they are. But you have to consider the mode of action and what is really what, as it were.
At any rate, the sugar + H2O2 + refined neem oil works fast. I sprayed my Bay leaf plant (Laurus nobilis) plant that had spider mites on it and I looked with a 30x scope the next day and they were all reduced to black specs. The eggs were also shriveling up. I saw no mites running around. I have recommended this spray to several indoor and outdoor growers, and they have reported very positive results. They also report that their Cannabis plants respond very well to it.
5 Likes
Hi again BigSur,
Lets wish this azadirachtin substance in his neem oil will taste better than mine when i attempted to vaporize it then!!
For me that was a major obstacle hence i keep projecting my trauma on othersā¦
Thatās where the capacity to mutate kicks in i think: not all parasites are doomed, the few which survived will multiply and thatās why using sprays alone aināt sufficient as this also requires discipline, similar to antibiotics i presume.
Thank you for those precisions.
Good day, have fun!!
1 Like
I would not use raw unrefined neem on a plant that is to be harvested any time soon. The smell and taste of raw neem can be unpleasant. Aza breaks down pretty fast though, in any kind of light. Under UV it is a matter of days. For soon to be harvested plants, use H2O2 and sugar. It is highly effective, and leaves no residual taste. If you do not like the sugar residue (or the Neem residue), simply rinse your buds when you harvest them, and shake them out before drying. That will also remove any dead mites and dust.
4 Likes
Just to note, I have not been spraying my cover crop, which is where Iām finding them in large numbers.
1 Like
Yes, but they (mites and insects) cannot mutate to get around basic physics and chemistry and the actions of osmosis, oxygenation, drowning in soap, suffocating being coated in oil sprays, or stuck in Tanglefoot. They can and do become resistant to the modes of action in sprays like abamectin and aza, and hence they have to be used in rotation, as recommended on the labels of those sprays.
1 Like
Host plants are a big issue with mites, scale, aphids, thrips, whitefly, etc. You have to be wary of any other plants around your Cannabis, including weeds. They can all be hosts to a long list of creatures that you do not want on your plants. I spray my greenhouses with Talstar, a 100% effective knock-down for mites and a long list of insects. I also spray the ground and my pots which I grow my plants in. Mite eggs can stay dormant for a long time, as can pregnant female mites that go dormant over winter.
IMO, you have to go to full nuclear war with these pests, fungi and bugs. Here in Oregon, now that weed is legal, people are growing hemp and marijuana all over the state. And the infestations of mites and other insects are getting worse. There has been a noted increase in hemp mites, broad mites, and spider mites. PM has always been here (it is a new world plant disease) and there are always PM spores around. Ants are another issue. The Argentine ant has colonized California and Southern Oregon to the extent it has because it is one giant colony. They are farmers, and will haul all kinds of insects onto your plants for milking for food. Snails and slugs are a common problem in the damp PNW. Garden snails were brought here from France in the 1800s by two idiots thinking that they were gourmet snails for eating. When these morons figured out their mistake, they simply dumped the lot of snails into the Sacramento River. Slugs are a common problem in the PNW, and I had one plant virtually eaten overnight by one slug. Mosaic virus is another problem I am seeing more of lately. Also another issue to think about when using cover crops. Tomato and tobacco mosaic virus can infect many species of plants, including Cannabis.
5 Likes
Enough with these bugs for a bit to look at the girls closeup. These are about ten days into flower. I may have over veged them, but I think they should stop before hitting the lights.
6 Likes
Hi there BigSur,
Thatās where the idea of NanoSilver struck me: it CANNOT be experimented with in presence of light, while although careless people who drank their own brew turned blue CS still didnāt kill them - or at least not right awayā¦ Not to mention it was to be rince-flushed after a delay no longer than an hour or so in order to limit absorption by vegetal tissue anyway.
All this keeping in mind iām only a lurker around here, as i was just reminded elsewhereā¦
Thatās sound advice to give the OP, discipline works best!
As long as that wonāt affect beneficial root microbes, etc. Which would be a serious concern using anti-microbial agents as CS sprays even for an hour i think. Personally i just found simpler and more convenient to keep my soil surface dry, which worked fine for a newbie not dreaming of joining the big leagues!
As i distinctly recall spidermite eggs were becoming an obcession and i only felt worse after i started to read about ādiapauseā during which the metabolism is lowered and hence pesticide intakes as wellā¦
In now remote days when i was planning to produce my own seeds the thought of preventive CS sprays appealed to me but thatās never been put into practice despite the fact that i once proposed a twin comparative experiment on another board only to get it demolished before it started, so i let the plants produce neem-resistant Borg instead so i could at least have them handy in my fridge, but to no end because the suite never came, out of forum adversity. Itās all ancient past now, but i continue to wonder what it could have been like, using, say, 3 ppm CS preventive sprays followed by a generous water shower 6 to 60 minutes later. while āsex-reversalā was expected to take place at significantly higher concentrations. I must add this was to complement a custom-made cabinet which never happened neitherā¦
Here in Shawinigan/Canada there were no places to go where i could have found all those wonderful chemicals an more, but it was easy enough to find pure silver that could have been used to produce CS by the gallons for penniesā¦
Sometimes perfection aināt readily available from a local store. Which is why i became more motivated to continue my reading on Hydrogen Peroxide as mentioned, to be honest. Now hereās something i might have wanted to put to test myself when i was still after man-size challenges!
Yet for me itās all in the past. Itās the OP ReikoX whoās in trouble today and his visitors aināt even like mine. So, iām afraid i was too prolific with my alternate scenarios, iām afraid (for my own failure to lunch early enough i guess!)ā¦
Just a few days ago i was reading that after 50-some years of IPM reseach the resistant mutations started to cause an increase of failures. Lucky me iām located up North, but then iām in QuĆ©bec where it wonāt matter as our health minister already announced a ban of all self-productions, including āMEDICALā i suppose, since their justification was the cost of law enforcementā¦ What can i say!
Anyway, in days when i still cared my attention was about to focus on synergies rather than single solutions, like lowering temperature while simultaneously attacking the pests on other fronts, if possible. I considered ozone, UV light, whatever the crawlers would hate a bit taken separately but possibly find utterly repeling to them once combined.
Granted! 
But then i must argue the snapshots would be more color-accurate using a large CFL. Because colour matters when in trouble i believe.
Good day, have fun!!
1 Like
Well, for one I grow in pots. Large pots that I can hand truck into the GH and back into the garage for light dep, and to avoid early frost. So the soil under the GH is not used for growing. Also Talstar is a short lived topical treatment and does not penetrate the soil much, unless you use it as a drench. The same can be said about Aza/Raw Neem. Also IMO, too much is made of soil microbes being affected by pesticide use. In my experience, the spores are out there en mass, and fungi will repopulate the soil in no time at all. Also IMO you do not need to colonize the soil with microbes, they are already there. I have 30 some odd types mushrooms that bloom here and there must be over 100 fungi types in any given sample of soil here, and a zillion more bacteria and other microbes. And not all of them are beneficial. There are several types of wild fungi in Oregon that are not beneficial at all, and they kill their hosts over time by not sharing nutrients or water. Also many types of nematodes can be detrimental to a lot of crops here. So not all soil critters are beneficial.
Cannabis, like a lot of plants, give of sugars from their fine root hairs. They do that to colonize fungi around the root mass. UC California Davis studies show that you do not need to colonize plant roots with any specific fungi species, the native species will do just fine, and in many cases they will do better than applied species. It all happens all on its own. You do not need fungi starter any more than you need compost starter for a large pile of leaves here. They compost and cook within days of putting into a large enough pile. Also you can overdo the soil microbes by overfeeding the fungi. I know people that dump sugar or molasses on their soil regularly, and they dump on spores. IMO that over colonizes the fungal mass and to too much of a good thing. Meaning it is a bad thing. I inoculate my grow tubs with worms and I feed the worms, which in turn aerate the soil and leave castings all over. They also distribute the microbes. In the ground they also attract moles, and mole holes in turn attract voles (field mice). Moles eat worms and grubs and such, but voles eat plant roots. They love my bamboo rhizomes, and they are a big problem here for me with the bamboo that I have planted in the ground. My cat loves to hunt and eat voles, and he keeps the population in check, along with the moles. Again, many things that are native in soils (here in the PNW anyway) are not beneficial. Its basically a war zone.
3 Likes
Well, this is why I depend on chemical and physical applications to control mites. Contact oil and soap sprays will kill the dormant eggs and dormant females. I also use Talstar and bleach for that as well on my greenhouse walls and dirt floor, and in my indoor grow areas. Must kill all of them. And if you nuke them in their active phases, and early in the cycle, all the better. Or just prevent them like I do with sprays that they cannot build resistance to, like oil, soap and sugar, and keep them out.
Sadly Canada has banned Neem, refined Neem, and all ag oil. Not because it is not effective, far from it. But Canada has a really stupid law that says that a product has to be PROVEN effective before it can be sold there. So the general public is denied access to what we use regularly in the US, because no company is going to spend the money needed to fund studies to prove what everyone already knows for such generic products as Neem oil and Agricultural mineral oil. I used to buy Lilly Miller ag mineral oil here, and it was good stuff. But it was made in Canada. So it is no longer available. Stupid is as stupid does I guess?
2 Likes
Thatās pretty much what i did. I was adding an inooculant weekly and the malted barley has a ton of sugar in it. Couple that with over watering and you have the perfect environment for these guys as well as fungus gnats and other pests.
Started the spray rotation again. Last night was spinosad, tonight will be Method-1 (oils), tomorrow sugar+h2o2, Sunday will be LAB, then I will reevaluate. Honestly, the plants are loving the spray rotation.
1 Like
Salutations BigSur,
Thank you for providing these detailed comments, iām sure the OP will appreciate this.
Yes, and not for the right reasons - i concur! Except itās not about being stupid, great power gives great responsibility and hence iād just concatenate saying itās the fruit of sick criminal minds, the same as under Harperā¦ But this is supposed to be about mites, The Borg, etc. Just know the root of evil runs deep and our mass-media press still supports bigot anti-cannabic prohibitionism with active propaganda.
Iād be worried that the oil causes nanosilver to penetrate cell walls faster while iād wish for the opposite in my theoretical application but thatās no surprize to me to read it was useful somehow. What made me so motivated with CS spray scenarios was that silver coins are being distributed through Canada Post (practically everywhere), hence no government is going to ban those i thinkā¦
Good day, have fun!!
Silver and copper are being re-investigated heavily now for their anti microbial properties. They are even being used on and for surfaces in hospital wards that have had outbreaks of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, like Mercer/MRSA. I use a Colloidal Silver (CS) spray for my catās ear mites. Damn things bite my fingers if he gets them and I scratch his ears. I use Talstar indoors for killing fleas, mites, and ticks. It also works for bed bugs.
In an odd twist, I collect Canadian silver coins, and I have a large collection of dollars and half dollars going back to about 1930 or so. We used to go to Canada every year in the summer in the later 1960s. Canada is a big silver mining/producing country.
1 Like