Posted on 12/16/2021 10:17:14 AM PST by djf
Dish soap or tobacco juice. Or sprinkle diamatateous earth all over the tree. Its totally non toxic. We dust our chickens for mites with it.
This is a tree that I grew from seeds - seeds out of a white grapefruit, a Duncan grapefruit, and it getting almost impossible to find.
According to everything I read on the web, I can’t expect any fruit until it is 5 years old or so.
If you have never had a Duncan grapefruit you would be AMAZED by it! But the qwest for seedless and red grapefruits etc have effectively mad Duncans almost extinct.
Note.....A healthy tree typically shuns spider mites. There is an underlying weakness in the tree. Get it looked at by an arborist for proper soil balance of pH and fertility. Something is weakening the tree.
You can diliute hydrogen peroxide and spray it. I’ve done that on indoor plants in a tent and it worked fine. Not going to hurt anyone ingesting anything either.
I’ve used this too! Great results.
I mix dawn soap with water and spray the whole tree and let it sit for a few minutes. The soap chokes them out and afterward you simply rinse the tree off. Works all the time for me.
Not true as I’ve had many a glass and am here to tell you about it😁
i’ve read that you can blast them off with high pressure water and they have limited ability to crawl back up ...
I can verify that.
Acrimite 50ws is the best.
Nasty little critters. They are so small they float on air and move with the breeze. Very difficult to get rid of. First clean up all lawn and yard debris. They can live and breed in it. I had a large Lady Banks Rose that they lived in. Got rid of the rose. It covered 1/2 my roof and my garage. Would kill my tomatoes if didnt spray daily.
Second use high pressure hose spay to knock down all the webs and blast them off the bottom of the leaves. Won”t kill them but reduces damage.
Third find a good miticide. Thats expensive. Regular pest sprays won’t work since the drink different plant juices that the systemic insecticides don’t touch. Commercial miticides much better than what you can buy in store. Unfortunately the probability of them coming back is high.
Since they float on the breeze the main source further coming back maybe at your neighbors even a block away.
From what I understand even a hard freeze doesn’t kill them. Good luck.
Look up Lady Banks Rose in Tombstone. The stupid plant I swear more aggressive than bougainvillea but less than bamboo. Spider mites id equate to bamboo that’s been allowed to grow wild
The soap has to be a real soap. Not only does it help to hold it onto tge insect but it works at dissolving the bugs outside. Dr. Bonners Castile liquid soap works well and is inexpensive. If you use it and something nasty tasting it will keep the deer and rabbits from eating your garden and easily washes off. I seem to remember that one of the nasty tasting items was chapperel which you make into a tea and mix with Dr Bonners and then spray on tge plants. I added a bunch of hot pepper extract too. Nothing like ghost pepper or even hanenaro pepper extract boil with other nasty ingredients when you make the tea so the oils get in. As a safety note don’t use anything poisonous
Diatomaceous earth is the best!! But once it’s damp, it’s useless, so I don’t know how helpful it is outdoors.
I’ve never heard that and have studied it for a very long time.
That is usually good for crawly critters and sails and slugs. It dries up tthir secretions and cuts and scratches them up. Really works with slugs and snails. Its cheap but needs to be replaced after it rains hard. Just pour in circle around plants you want to protect.
DE dessicates bugs, absorbing moisture from them. It can only absorb so much. Therefore it’s less effective in wet places.
Also, outside, I would think it’d disappear pretty fast in the rain.
Mites indoors, it’d be an apocalypse for them.
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