Spider Mites....Anyone used EcoSmart garden insect killer? Young plants in veg

So this is my first encounter with the borg.....I plan on hittig them damn hard!!

2 young plants in soil, and a young clone in hydro are effected. Everything is in veg and this has pretty much stopped all growth.....
I have sprayed twice yesterday with a pyrethrum spray and trimmed off the growth that is too far gone. I have also added a little neem into the res, and will do a neem spray every few days.

Not a lot of products in my part of the world that everyone else has access to. I have found this stuff called EcoSmart garden insect spray. It says it targets mites and their eggs. The ingredients give me hope:
Rosemary, peppermint, thyme and clove oil at 0.25%. Seems similar to the Zero Tollerence product although the concenntrations are about double for the ecosmart compared to zero tollerence.

Anyone used this Ecosmart stuff before? Some casual googling has led me to beleive that if used as-is out of the bottle there is a good chance of killing my plants. If I use it, I will be diluting it by at least 2x, but possibly 3-4x. Any other ideas? Has anyone used the cayanne pepper method to work? I have been everywhere in my area and cannot find any pepper that are considered 'hot'.

I will be doing a rotating schedule of one of the above every 2-3 days. I am going to kill these bastards!

Never heard of that stuff...I have used avid in the past with great results although its far from organic..around here everybody is starting to use quantum apocalypse.few people I personaly know have been using it with 100% success and its all natural.they had bad infestations too.its neem oil but they do something different than any other company some particilized atomized something or another.might want to look at there site.

You might find an answer to your problem on this thread: https://www.rollitup.org/t/10-years-with-spider-mites-and-how-i-finally-got-rid-of-them.828001/

Unfortunately none of the above listed products are available in my location. I'm feeling pretty confident about diluting the mixture down to less than the concentration of zero tollerance. I have been reading that rosemary oil is an ovicide to spider mites and will get the eggs as well. At this stage I will wait 1 more day as it was 2 days ago that I initially hit them with pyrethrum. I will only try one plant to make sure I don't wipe out all my babies if it does indeed cook weed plants as some research leads me to believe. I'll report back with info.

Yo. DO you have the borg or spider mite?!?!?!?!?! big difference.
I have had both and killed them both.
You have to findout what it is.
The "borg" is a broadmite that eats your new growth and spits up some poison shit on your plant so no new growth will come from that spot.

Daggy said:

Yo. DO you have the borg or spider mite?!?!?!?!?! big difference.
I have had both and killed them both.
You have to findout what it is.
The "borg" is a broadmite that eats your new growth and spits up some poison shit on your plant so no new growth will come from that spot.

Click to expand...

I thought they were the same thing...live and learn.
Pretty certain that I've got spider mites. Webs and everything...Have not seen any live ones since I sprayed so I know I'm winning so far...but the war is far from over...

OK. The thing is with spider mites is if they live the poison you give them they will become stronger and immune to the poison used.
My advice. HIT THEM HARD! Ive had the same issue and with a foliar spray (I used a atomizer) i hit the plants hard with Forbid-4f and floramite.
With that combination im sure they will not live. As a matter of fact after about 1 week I would see dead spider mites on the back of my leaves. Foliar spray again with water and you should be good to go. Hope this helps.

2-3 tbsp of neem oil weekly, stops broad mites and spider mites.

hexthat said:

2-3 tbsp of neem oil weekly, stops broad mites and spider mites.

Click to expand...

I have heard that neem is more of a preventative measure rather than an insecticide. I have already got a bottle and will be using it quite regulaly to keep them away once I have knocked them back.

Daggy said:

OK. The thing is with spider mites is if they live the poison you give them they will become stronger and immune to the poison used.
My advice. HIT THEM HARD! Ive had the same issue and with a foliar spray (I used a atomizer) i hit the plants hard with Forbid-4f and floramite.
With that combination im sure they will not live. As a matter of fact after about 1 week I would see dead spider mites on the back of my leaves. Foliar spray again with water and you should be good to go. Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

That echos pretty much everything I have read about dealing with them. Don't fuck around...hit them hard and hit them fast. I really wish more of the products that are available in the USA were available here but unfortunatly not.

Well I completely ignored my own advice about only hitting one plant, and instead mixed about 250mls of the Ecosmart and added water to make about 1.5L of solution. I then proceeded to clean everything. I washed the plants and the soil down, let it sit for about 15 minutes and then gave them a good shower and flushed the soil out. Then I went nd sprayed pretty much everything in the tent and then the whole inside of the tent. I went pretty crazy with it, and got as much as I could. So far (about 18 hours after application) I cannot see any problems like wilting plants or anything, and I have yet to see a return, but if what I have read is true about the rosemary extract, it should have killed the eggs as well. Time will tell. From here, I will probably do one more application of this Ecosmart solution and then start on the neem oil every 3-4 days provided they do no make a return. I have one more option left, but it is my nuclear option. It is a systemic pesticide which I don't feel great about using, but I am confident that being so early in my grow I should be okay.

We have a big problem with spider mites where I am. Rosemary is great for mites, but it's a fine line in my experience. I've had the mites survive and I've also killed the plants. If memory serves, it took a few days for them to wilt.

Live ladybugs are the only route I consider these days. If you can manage to get just a few to hang out in your grow space long term, you won't have any problems again.

Rooster99 said:

I have heard that neem is more of a preventative measure rather than an insecticide. I have already got a bottle and will be using it quite regularly to keep them away once I have knocked them back.

Click to expand...

Neem oil is amazing, it sterilizes the mites so they dont have anymore babies. If you forget to spray once a week old eggs may hatch out and it only takes one of those hermi spider mites to repopulate. Spider mites when they lay eggs they have different times they hatch most around 3 days after being laid and some up to a year or more before they hatch. You can spray your plants down with avid and have no problems for months then one egg hatches and they are back.

Also neem oil cures your plants of powder mildew, and other fungi. Its a product that works for pretty much for all problems that are not environment related.

Some negative aspects of using organic Neem oil is it sterilizes human males.

Some people say bacillus subtilis kills spider mites but i have never seen any effect on them. Negative aspects of bacillus subtilis is it replaces normal human gut flora, but some people use it as a probiotic.

Update if anyone is interested.....

Plants are still alive. Even my very small clone in perlite (small even for a clone). However, it appears that there is some damage done to all the white hairs....they are now brown...but I'm not flowering so no biggie. There are a few leaves on the largest of my plant (still a very small plant) that are browning/browned but the other plant and the clone seem okay. But the best part is all plants are perking up, and I am pretty sure new growth is starting to appear. The spider mites stopped all progress and growth in my garden for at least 2 weeks before I caught them (they were REALLY tiny, and I was trying to diagnose a soil/nutrient problem before I finally caught on......i feel pretty stupid but live and learn I guess). So the new vigor shown by the girls is making me beleive I am winning!

No sign of the mites returning yet........I am starting to get confident that I may begin my neem applications once or twice a week to keep them off.

From what I can see, this stuff works. Again, I made 1.5L of solution by mixing 250mls of Ecosmart with water into a high pressure sprayer. Sprayed EVERYTHING that is in the tent (except my DIY LED)....Res, pot stands, pots, cables, plants, soil and then the tent itself. At least it smells nice and you can pretty much bathe in it without any problems. I only let it sit on the plants and soil for around 15 minutes before giving it a really vigorous wash in the shower. Really flushed the soil out. Seems the tiny gnat infestation has also been a casuality of the recent proceedings.

I'll keep this thread updated as to my progress. The information I could find about this product before I attempted this had everything from "YOUR PLANTS WILL 100% DIE" right through to "Works as advertised" so getting the information out there will hopefully help someone.

Tetrasan