I think they can only die once. Make sure you don’t smoke any of that stuff.
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Treat your current plant with avid/eagle, once your sure it’s all gone, cut clones to start new moms, then only bloom clones off the new mom. If it’s your own smoke it’s up to you, but I would not smoke a plant that was directly treated.
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That’s the plan.
Well my tent is done. Got home and found a couple on my GG4 and saw a few other leaves that looked the same. Tomorrow morning I will cull them and start cleaning. I just minutes ago brought my remaining moms in from treating them with Tetrasan. Looks they will get another dose of Avid early next week as well at this point. And will continue rotation until after Thanksgiving. My hope is to be able to restart a grow in my tent by Christmas.
Im going to take a break for a few weeks unless I need info. I cant imagine those of you who grow lots or even rooms and more rooms that get decimated like this. Worse case scenario I chuck all and start over unless I can keep my moms. Id like to kick the nuts off the fuck who mailed me this and I also have to bear responsibility. Never leave a hot chick alone with a sexual predator.
I slept on on and got up and culled the rest of my tent unfortunately and this at least rips off the band-aid and time to move forward. My moms are still my priority and preserving the strains I hold by continuing to treat and re clone them at least twice before I grow out cuts from them.
My tent will be cleaned this weekend, and again in the days to come and will probably then pull the tent out of the grow space and take it down and clean it again and start cleaning the rest of the grow space a few times before setting it back up.
On a impulse I ordered this to also hopefully help. Reading data that UVC helps to kill mites and mold, and in very small doses also on plants from research on strawberries. I will not be using this on moms. Just grow spaces several times over the next 4-6 weeks.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088VFT1R8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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What people here said about health is not broscience.
Healthy plants have more hairs and trichomes that are sharp and stiff depending on strain.
Run your fingers against your healthiest strains leaves and see.
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Ok I have a question then. Have your plants ever overcame a spider mite infestation by improving their health? Because in my experience the mites love healthy plants, they can suck the juice out.
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If you read the study it says it merely reduced the number of mites and eggs. From a value of 6 in the control to 4.5.
At best you can reduce the mites 25%…but if you have 2 mites indoors…you have an infestation. They’ll still reproduce and munch your plants happily.
It does sound like it does show some promise as an adjuvant with other pesticides or a preventative for outdoor season. Interesting stuff.
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So a distinction without a current difference. Still an infestation. But the future knows all, bitch just isnt talking yet.
One of the biggest things about getting rid of them is persistence.
I would suggest spraying them outside with the hose if possible. This will eliminate 50 to 75% of them. After that spray them daily or every other day for 2 to 4 weeks depending on the state of the infestation.
You can use Dr. Zymes right up till harvest, and can wash your buds with a solution of it.
Biggest thing is persistence and even when you think you have them under control, do not stop. They will not give up.
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Only happened once long noobish time ago when i needed to flower a gg4 and left in warm dry garage with 12 12 leds nothing else. I took it outside in sun and like many here sprayed it used remedies like soap neem pytherin etc it got rid of them dont forget hit the top soil too. Along the ways i learned about VPD, air movement, immune boosters (SA, harpin, chitisan) health + immunity never had it again until my tent fan died (also lazy with my foliar regime) and I got thrips in summer which are a big pain too. Admittedly it was too hot and plants where already stressed
I have also used silica powder (diatomaceous earth) food grade powder puff it on dehydrates the bastards.
In flower your limited you dont wanna foliar anything but ro or whatever people stated low ppm natural that wont leave taste or dissolve thrichomes.
this! ^^^^^^
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I’ll relay some crazy shit about spider mites that I’ve learned over the years. They will easily survive the winter at -18C on the host plant, just kicking it until it warms up. Then you pick a squash from outside and plop it in the drawer. The mites will live on that squash all winter in the drawer if they have to. They can’t survive without a host. No squash in the drawer, no spider mites either. Just wash those turds off the squash.
OK so I bring some clean plants into an infested room. If the mites are left to their own devices, it will take longer than 2 weeks for those plants to get infested. Once you notice the infestation it’s probably been going on for 30-40 days.
Alright, so I got the mites from this guys organic living soil plants. They got webbed up faster than the hydro ones due to the simple fact it took 2 weeks for the infestation to spread. If you leave that colony, expect your plants to be all webbed up at day 50-60 depending on environmental conditions.
I wiped those suckers out in a single day. They are pathetic, useless, defenseless creatures. lol!
If you think a temperature spike or lack of silica or something else chitisan, stress, etc caused the mite infestation, I would instead say that exposure to the pathogen, in this case mites, is the real cause. Germ theory of disease.
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How? I’m interested.
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My experience with mites was difficult. I tried organic solutions like soap and spinosad, alcohol and h2o2, tried drowning, nothing worked well. The soap killed on contact but there is no way to get every egg and then too much soap damages the plant. You can raise h2o2 to a level to kill the plants and the mites will be dancing in the rain. Drowning, well i guess they were dancing submerged because 2 hours of drowning the leaves and they were still alive there, go figure. I ended up going the chemical route, when my clones were still small and easy to maintain, i killed every plant that i won’t be needing and treated them with Diafenthiuron which is a chemical miticide that is not approved in many countries due to its toxicity to marine life but has very low mammalian toxicity besides i used it only in very early vegging and it is metabolized by the plant. Anyway I submerged the plants 3 times every other day in that pesticide and then sprayed them another 3 times every other day. After years of battling with the mite, I am happy to say that my grow has been free from any mites since 6 months ago.
Also it is important to add that motes are active in warm weather and hibernate in the cold, so if you are trying to get them in the cold, it would be difficult to get them all while in the heat, they absolutely need to eat since they are active, so it is then that you need to eradicate them. They reproduce every 3 to 5 days in the heat so you need to get them and their offspring
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I take a clone pull off the big leaves then submerge the plant for 30min in cool water then spray it off with the vegetable sprayer. Be really rough on it you want to wash the eggs off.
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What about the eggs in the soil.?
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I toss that shit in the garbage.
I have wondered the same. I’m about ready to put my grow tent back up and have taken the break time to upgrade and reorganize my power panel I use to plug in timers, fans, lights etc. Been cleaning more over the same area as well. Added filters on my primary mom/clone box circulation fans that should help as well as making a filter for incoming air intake for my tent as well. It’s MERV 8 material with one side of it having a sticky/tacky coating that may in some small way help capture any strays and gnats as well.
I culled about everything except I have two cuts of the Chiquita Banana and one ghost about 8” tall in 4” square pots I’m going to grow out first and take cuts for future moms too. Everything else I culled can be replaced and I have a couple of others I have been looking for inbound in a few weeks. I’m watching the cuts I have like a hawk and going to up pot them next week after I finish putting my tent back together. Monday I’m ordering more predator mites to have the standing army ready including Hypoaspis miles for gnats which have worked well for me. I will be putting them in the up potted new grow and in my soils I keep in trash cans in a utility room that’s never cooler than mid 60’s. I have more bags of soil outside side and I hope the freezing temps kill off eggs but I’m pretty sure the soil is not the source of infestation. In absence of prey I will feed the predators a supply of food they will survive on a pollen substitute. Reading up the current trend in commercial grows of vegetables etc is to have the predators already established to meet infestation before it happens. Makes sense to me. The fungus gnat predator mites eat plant matter in the soil when no fungus larvae are present. This has been a painful and not inexpensive lesson.
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Put the plants into tissue culture and bleach your grow space or light it on fire.
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