snc

My bananas, plumerias, and lemon tree have recently developed spider mites during their winter stay inside. I am planting/placing them outside this weekend. Do I need to treat them before they are planted outside or will the mites disappear once they are back outside? thanks.

Bananaman88

I had this same problem with my heliconias I was overwintering inside. As soon as the weather got even close to the right temps for me to move them back out that's what I did. I sprayed them down one more time with insecticidal soap and orange oil. I'm sure this helped but I also think once your plants are back out in the environment most of the spider mites will disperse. If you think about it, even if you have 50 plants in the house, this pales in comparison to the amount of green out in the environment that they could feed on. Having plants inside simply concentrates them on the few plants you have, whereas outside they are free to roam all over the place.

damaclese

this was a bad winter for spider mites in my neck of the woods all of the bananas were affected i had to spray them repeatedly and with and ever increasingly stronger types of control i started off with simple insecticidal sop which after 5 sprayings at 5 day intervals did nothing to arrest the spread so i moved up to parathus after 3 sprayings of that still no end in site i had to go out and get a product with both pyranthus and butyl sprayed that it showed some signs of helping but after the third application we are now talking about a 11 different applications so i took a chance and increased the strength by about triple and that was the only way i got rid of them all in all it left what were unblemished beautifully foliated plants looking like they were in some kind of round up war i thought they mite die from all the mites plus the heave applications of insecticide it was at that point i moved them out side a bit prematurely as the weather was still in the high 40 to low 50s at night this set them back obviously but there all setting new leafs now if i can just get them through are notoriously windy march weather but thats another story for a later date

PS i just want to say one thing about mites in general when this subject comes up the first thing some one will say to the poor schmuck is " no bigy just spray them with insecticidal sop easy they will be gone in a jiffy" ya right first off there are lots of different species of mite and some are rather delicate theirs no doubt in that but then there are a couple of species that are vary tough and adaptable particularly the mites that like to live in vary dry desert type of conditions thees type of mites can survive vary harsh conditions and secrete certain waxes that help protect them for dehydration and there by saver there little A@$ from the affects of insecticidal applications you have to treat thees types with vary heave concentrations of insecticide and at regaler intervals over many many weeks i will say this bananana88 is right about putting them out side that dos help but there still going to be around id continue spraying until you are sure they are gone for good but if a plant is in bloom you should stop applications as you don't want to kill any beneficial insects like bees whom are attracted to the flowers and as we all know Bees are are favorite most endangered insect species thees days never spray nicotine based insecticides in you garden ever!!!!!! bees are vary affected by this type of chemical

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Bob

Pauly, remember hearing a while back that for the mites you have with the waxy secretions to protect them from drying that Diatomaceous earth would take care them. Apparently they take off the coating when ridding themselves of the powder and it kills them.

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snc

thanks for the replies, on another note anyone know where i can turn off the email message everytime someone replies to a thread I have?????

damaclese

go to user CP at the top left of this page click it then click edit Options theirs a scroll down box thats says instant email notifications simply click that box scroll down to the no notifications and click on that box and no more emails

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