PeteMoss

Hi,

So I "accidentally" noticed some moving dust particles on my cavendish. I tried to take some pictures, it was reallllly hard to see but imanaged to get a couple good ones. These look like the two spotted spider mites i believe? I had to zoom in as far as i could on the picture i could and then screen cap that to even recognize these moving dust particles were even some type of bug at all.

Banana Gallery - IMG_8088

Banana Gallery - IMG_8089

I have 4 bananas and ALL of them have them, and I have a few 1 gallon sized washingtonia palms that i haven't noticed the moving dust on, but i did see some webbing on them. I have 40+ washingtonia seedlings that i keep checking a few of and luckily there's no sign of them on the seedlings yet. I've been using a castile soap solution spray up until today i got a spinosad spray and a pyrethrin (spelling?) spray to alternate each week until I get rid of them. I've read a few posts on bananas.org, palmtalk.org, and houzz which is where i got these ideas from.

I also came across the suggestion of Anti-Stress 2000 a few times and ordered form amazon, which is an anti-dessicant and coats the plant in a polymer so it doesn't lose as much water as normal. From the threads I've read this stuff is incredible. keeps the plant form losing water, helps it in all sorts of ways and even allows it to become slightly more cold hardy, etc. The kicker for me was that it apparently kills the spider mites on contact, and the barrier it creates deters them from returning. According to a houzz thread about using it on brugs it lasted for 3 months and no sign of mites anywhere the whole time, AND the plants were much more robust.

The catch, most these threads I read are from 2007,'08, and '09. Has anyone had success with this anti-stress 2000 (aka anti-stress 550) stuff recently?

Are these actually spider mites? The castile soap seems to kill them off for a day, and i see new crawling dust, but without the black spots. I'm assuming these are newly hatched mites as the spots apparently appear as they age.

I also wanted to ask what it is about the outdoors that allegedly prevents spider mites. I've read they're an issue with indoor plants in the winter when its dry. I have no AC and it's summer in the 80's F, so i leave the windows open all day and i imagine as humid inside as it is outside here in Connecticut.

My last question is about using predatory mites (sorry, i wrote more than i thought i would). If I use the predatory mites, will they also be affected by spinosad and my other methods of control? Are predatory mites overkill for a windowsill garden in my apartment?

Thanks all!

cincinnana

Spinosad.......

Or you can pick them off ...one by .....one.

Mites are hard to control and eradicate.
Mites will travel ......20 feet to another host when possible.

Check the web for a specific solution..

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Sundra

It looks like they've got the dreaded two spotted spider mite.

It sounds like your plants are indoors?

Are they still a managable size that you could bring them to the shower and rinse them?

When I've had indoor infestations in the past what worked best for me was aggresively spraying the plants in the shower, (yay for detachable shower head!) focusing on the leaf undersides+nooks and crannies where they like to hide and lay their eggs. Smaller plants I used the sink.

I did this every other evening for as long as it took( a couple of weeks or so), and this included inspecting the leaves and immediatly wiping away anything circumspect that showed up.

The eggs take about a week to hatch, and some will be in the soil, so even if you get rid of the adults and eggs on the leaves, be prepared for wave 2! The trick is to get rid of them before those ones can lay eggs...or there will be wave 3...and 4..and... yeah they're a major pain the A_ _ to get rid of.

If you want to be extra thorough, you're gonna have to wipe off all the surfaces your plants have been hanging out on.

As far as being outdoors prevents them? I have found it to be the opposite!

My indoor plants have ONLY gotten infested back when i was less careful...Brought in plants for the winter that had them *from outside*--

Or when I would buy from stores and didn't know to check. (I'm looking at YOU Wal-Mart. )

The reason it "seems" they show up indoors is outside they are are better controlled by natural predators, rain, the hose. Sometimes they simply wander off to different plants far away.

Indoors there is none of this, so they multiply and spread like wildfire. ..... And it's usually not until the infestation is very bad that they get noticed.

Good luck to you!

PeteMoss

Yes they are in side, and as a matter of fact i did just take them into the showr. no removeable head but i did wipe all the leaves. the damaged leaves (possibly due to my soap pray if not the mites?) practically broke off at the petioles when i watered them.

Man i just did a clean wipe of all those surfaces just before discovering this too.

I'm interested in hearing if anyone has had better luck with predatory mites than sprays. I really want to try but it's expensive for me to get them from here SPIDER MITE PREDATORS FACT SHEET & Release Instructions

Another thought I'm having is just chopping them down at the base and literally just trashing any mites/eggs on the leaves, hoping it's not a huge issue on my palms, and trying to prevent them from returning to new banana leaves. seems extreme though

raygrogan

Upping the humidity helped me get spider mites under control. You can only go so high with your main house humidifier before you start getting a worse problem, mold (bad for people). I think the numbers are something like ideal is maybe 35%, more than 40% you get mold. Enclosing the growing area with a plastic "wall" (a curtain floor to ceiling) helped (raised the humidity about 5 percentage points). Plus a homemade humidifier (= a fan blowing on a towel hanging in a tote of water) adds another point or so if needed when it is deep cold Iowa winter. Good luck!

PeteMoss

The weather forecast says 79F@ 65% humidity. my windows are wide open all day so i think it's plenty humid

cincinnana

You will need a chemical abatement.....
Treat all containers including all pots and sides and areas touching them....

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PeteMoss

So they were actually gone for about a month until i noticed them again just today. AntiStress 2000 doesn't seem to work the wonders all the other threads I have read on it have alleged - albeit those are all from 2009. Now they have spread to my palm tree seedlings too I sprayed the rest of my spinosad mix. If that doesn't do much then I think I will try predators from here SPIDER MITE PREDATORS FACT SHEET & Release Instructions

I don't really like the idea of spraying chemicals on these things, but i think that will be a last resort. I wanna try the predators before I spray the plants with something that will kill them off instead of/in addition to the spider mites, because I have a good feeling I know which ones will come back after that -_-

smeash

It may sound extreme, but i grow some rare hot peppers that start indoors in the winter under grow lights. They became infested with spider mites.. i tried every spray you can think of but they always came back. What i ended up doing, was filling a large tub with 10% bleach water, and completely submerging my plants for an hr or so.. it worked. I recently had a purple sweet potato vine INFESTED with caterpillers, and even BT wasnt helping. I submerged that plant as well and the issue was solved.. there were thousands of tiny caterpillers floating in that bucket as they release from the plant to come to the surface. So far, none of the plants that i have used this method on have been harmed. Obviously large plants cant really use this method, unless you have a swimming pool

sirdoofus

I agree with Smeash - its what I do on the odd occasion an infestation erupts on an indoor plant. I just use soapy water and completely submerge the plants for about 20-30 minutes and so far, knock on wood, its never failed to eradicate the problem.

Good luck.

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cincinnana

And do it again and again.......

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kathy.cales

I sprayed mine with sevin, they seem to be gone. But I spray every 3 to 4 weeks to make sure they stay away. All of my plants are dwarf and in pots outside.

PeteMoss

I never got a chance to order the predators, shipping times and my schedule the past couple weeks would've led to them dying in my mailbox... So I kept spraying and it works for a few days. @cincinnana and then I do it again. I still wanna give predators a shot but the sprays kill them too, so I suppose I have to wait.

@smeash & @sirdoofus When you say submerge, you mean take 'em out of the planters and submerge the roots and foliage? I'd be afraid the palm tree seedlings might not take it so well... I suppose the fittest will survive. How long before you noticed them come back?

My largest plant is a 2 foot washingtonia robusta. I spray that too but I haven't noticed anything on it to start. I have 1 footer too, same thing. But many of my washingtonia seedlings are succumbing to the mites, I wonder if it's because they're small strap leaves are easier to penetrate the almost cardboard feeling fan leaves of the bigger palms. The Bananas are like a foot tall.

The dwarf namwa and the basjoo I was growing seemed to host the most mites, so sadly i chopped them down and scrapped them I can't find any on the dwarf cavendish now, which is odd because that one had the most when i first noticed.

sirdoofus

I submerge the whole thing, pot and all, so it is completely underwater. I have never had any plant suffer because of it, and in fact, the last one I subjected to this treatment was a succulent which I forgot about and left submerged for about 36 hours .....totally fine.

Because I don't like leaving a lot of potting mix in my bathtub or utility sink, I will sometimes, not always, use something like tinfoil or plastic bags, with holes, to hold it in the pot without inhibiting the drenching of the planting medium.

I have done this to a reasonable variety of plants and never, ever had a problem. So far it hasn't failed to work and the plants have always been just fine afterwards, as if they hadn't been through an ordeal at all.

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sirdoofus

I guess I should qualify that I have not done this with bananas or palms (I don't think, maybe a palm at some point but can't say for sure)...although I don't see any reason why either would be less tolerant to this course of action.

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PeteMoss

Honestly this was one of my main concerns, I didn't wanna have to dig everything out of the planters again. my soil is very loose. (can't tell you how many times ive done this the past couple months with ALL of my plants, for many different reasons.)

How much/what type of soap? I'm a little more hesitant to use bleach than i am soap

EDIT: I suppose drenching the planting medium also means I should do this when they need to be watered, to prevent other issues such as rotting.

sirdoofus

I use regular dish soap, the kind you might keep at your kitchen sink for washing dishes by hand. But I am sure any kind of mild liquid soap/shampoo would be fine.

I don't use a huge amount by any means, enough to get the water good and sudsy. All the soap does is break the surface tension ensuring the little buggers get soaked and drown, so I don't think it really takes very much. Although I do think it would be hard to overdo it.

For what its worth, I don't think a mild bleach solution is likely to be a problem either, but I would have to defer to others for a recommended concentration.

I do it when it needs to be done, as I don't want to give them any further opportunities to continue damaging the host plant or jump to other plants.

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PeteMoss

What about their eggs? I feel like this would be something I'd end up having to do every week also

sirdoofus

That's a good question, one I don't really have an answer for except to say that I have never had a resurgence of an infestation. Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have done it probably 10 times over my 30 odd years of growing houseplants without an issue. Anecdotal to be sure, but so far.......

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PeteMoss

I'll take your word for it, it's just that I have 50 something plants I'd need to hit if i want to be thorough. not that they're terribly large, it's just a lot

EDIT: Also, 20-30 minutes for bananas I'm sure is fine, I water them every two or three days. The palms I water every 1 or 2 weeks :/ I'm not sure they won't drown