I can’t get rid of those bastards <angry face>

Hi, I have this problem from the beginning and it’s ruining my harvest, I already started another grow with 3 weeks plants and they have already been attacked. Can you identify them and prompt how to deal with them? (homemade solutions are to weak (I tried canna cure as well as neem oil mixture) I need sth stronger and killable)

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Looks like spider mites, yea they’re a bitch, but not impossible to eradicate. You need to battle them in all stages of development, one shot anything isn’t enough to destroy them, they need to be battled even when you don’t see them anymore and think you won.

Matured plants with their many hiding places must be removed and processed without reintroducing the operation unwittingly.

Get a jeweler’s loop, it’s what a scope is to a riffle! Wash your hands up to your elbows every time you handle plants or go in the room.

Get some garden sprayers for Alcohol (deluded), Chlorine Bleach, Liquid Ladybug, and neem oil.

Learn how these products are used in pest and mold control along with the doe’s and don’ts like using neem oil on buds just to name one.

Vigilance after the battle is necessary to win the war, if they do reinfect they’ll be congregated on one plant and usually start from the bottom up, that’s where you need the jeweler’s loupe to spot enemy troop movements before they can gain a footing and their numbers are few, learn their life cycle cradle to grave and make sure no generations are free from oppression (like us).

Use your loupe like a Marine Recon team! Keep doing patrols unrelenting even after they’re eradicated, this will insure no colony can get established and have a field day on your dime!

There’s too much to convey in my knowledge of these bastards and I hope I pointed you in the right direction. The rest is up to you and how vigilant you are at the art of war!

BANZAI !!!

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Here is a link of my battle with spider mites.

A quick cheap way to kill them on contact is using the Ning-Icide recipe.
2-3 habanero peppers
2-3 (or more) garlic cloves
1/2 tsp dish soap
Quart water
Sprayer
Mash up the garlic in a mortar and pestle
Add habanero and mash up
Strain mash through strainer into sprayer add water and soap.
Spray bottoms and tops of leaves
Top of soil and sides of pot
Kills them on contact
Repeat every 3-4 days

Many other products I’ve been using to

Hope this helps

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@Skydiver I copied your formula, I read those ingredients before but it didn’t have a practical and precise formula.

One question, my friend grows hot peppers with some of the highest jewel rating in the world, they burn my skin on contact, no kidding, are these preferable to lower heat rated peppers?

Thanks for the formula, store bought brand names are usually way overpriced compared to home made! Just off the top of my head it looks like I’ll be saving 90,000% adding up the cost of the base ingredients over what I have been using.
Same thing with the plant food I make, my savings are spectacular and so are the results, I don’t have a middleman squeezing for every cent, sacrificing quality by using inferior compounds.

We make our plant food from ammonium free, urea free, highly purified and water soluble compounds. My cost is lower than miracle grow and my ingredients are human consumption grade! I can DRINK MY BLOOM!

Glad you can use the recipe.
Was actually from @Ning who shared it with me.
The capsaician (Stuff that’s burns your stuff) Is what ends up killing them on contact
Not sure what peppers your able to source but here is a chart and I’m using Habanero. The higher on the chart the less amount you’ll need the lower the more peppers - mass (they all different sizes) you’ll need. Works great as a quick dead stop to mites that it hits. Doesn’t stay long as the capsaician And oils etc dissipate.

Cool that you are low impact on your wallet and well everything sourcing your amendments / nutrients like you do.

I usually double the recipe and make 1/2 gallon for my needs at the moment. Also you can as your adding water put that water through the strainer full of mushed up peppers and garlic to get as much good stuff in there…

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White flies are my worst enemies. Neem oil is worthless…try Captain Jack Bug Brew.
Saturate…then retreat 3 days later. Trim dead leaves off…

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Thanks for the mention, @Skydiver.

Looks like your plants are flowering already, however, for the VEGETATIVE state only, you can use Isopropyl alcohol, the cheap 70% is plenty, to pour onto the juice. Capsaicin is very soluble in alcohol, that’s why if you ate really spicy hot food, wash it down with alcoholic drink is far more effective than iced water. You will extract a lot more of capsaicin out of the pepper and garlic essence too. You can use straight shot of alcohol wash in vegetative plants. Alcohol washes/dissolves trichomes so you don’t want to use on the plants that produces trichomes already.

You could let the alcohol dissipate out then dilute it with water if you want to spray plants with trichomes. I haven’t tried this yet, just an afterthought.

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Thanks a lot mates, I will buy ingredients and try out the @Skydiver recipe, hope it will work.

As of now the veg tent (had an Auto in there that never was infested wit mites sitting in the middle of all the others) is the infected tent with the mites so I could use the pepper / alcohol mix as no buds in there now after harvesting the Auto Jack last night.
I gotta get the flower tent taken care of today first before I go into the veg tent to evaluate the mite issue in there as haven’t in a couple days not wanting to contaminate the flower tent.

Thanks again for the added info.

@SativaMaker good deal trying the recipe but again it’s not my concoction I got the recipe from @Ning and don’t want to take credit for it just sharing it with others like Ning did for me.
Good luck with getting rid of them!
Did you verify using magnifying device that there are mites on the plants crawling around and in soil etc?

I have a post chronicling my journey fighting the mites over the last 5-6 weeks here that you can look through for other ideas etc.

Spider mites...my battle plan

Hope this helps and you get them under control quickly

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Straight 3% peroxide works great and is organic and harmless to flower. Used alternating with Captain Jack’s Dead Bug is 100% effective and can be used up to the day of harvest.

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I tried it out, my eyes were burning, so i need to buy sth for protection. For now I can see that this mixture does not bother my plants and a bug I hit with it started to run in panic. I think that after a while I will get rid of them, thanks a lot @Skydiver and @Ning

You have to take note which way the wind blows and stay upwind when you spray. Otherwise, you’ll need a face mask and goggle. I just mixed a batch up with isopropyl alcohol so it’s extremely pungent as the alcohol strips out a lot more capsaicin from the peppers. I was near-death choking, coughing. So I had to hold my breath, sprayed and ran out 10 ft away before I could breath.

This thing is potent! @Skydiver took a picture of the mite carcass with high magnifying power lenses before in his original post about spider mites. The damned bug just exploded. You have to hit it again because the eggs which are not killed will hatch out. If you spray them about twice/week, you’ll be able to gain a foothold. Fc

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Im having a horrible time w/spider mites
It seems that by the time I start to see them and start using Bergmans bug blaster 1 week then Dr Dooms
Sometimes my plants start to dry up like their roots are sealing up
Don’t know if they are savable at this point
When that happens its usually in Bloom around 9 weeks

@Budbrother had good results using Mammoth Biocontrol as it killed his spider mites. I’ve tried many products and none have completely eliminated them. I will order some Mammoth and see if it kills those still in the soil.

Hope this helps

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Did you wash after harvesting?

Yes: I try to do a peroxide wash on all of my plants.

Thanks. Does it affect the taste or potency?

Not even a little bit. I would say that it keeps plant material fresh longer.

The trichs don’t wash off either?

Trichomes are not soluble in water or peroxide. If you get too frisky with the agitation you could knock a few off.

Here’s a picture I took after washing ONE plant in So Cal, indoor grow: