Spider mites: how to deal with a pest in the garden, vegetable garden, greenhouse and at home

Hello! I was recently visiting my mother. She has a huge number of indoor plants in her house.

Over a cup of tea, my mother complained that recently the condition of the plants began to deteriorate: the leaves began to actively yellow.

I decided to conduct my own investigation. It turned out to be successful! On several plants under the sheets, using a magnifying glass, I found spider mites. The reprisal against them was a matter of time. Want to learn how to deal with spider mites? In the article below I will describe effective methods.

Spider mite on indoor plants: what kind of animal is it and how to deal with it?

Today you went to your favorite room rose and noticed something strange: the leaves began to turn yellow, dry and fall off. What is it? Everything seems to be normal: you always bring watering, temperature conditions, and fertilizers on time.

“Well, yes, some small dark dots, for sure, lumps of land got during intensive irrigation,” you will think. Of course, this may be so, but with the apparent painful state of the plants, taking this on faith is not worth it. Facts and only facts!

So, take a magnifying glass and look at the "particles", you can even poke one with a toothpick. If this unidentified object ceased to be a speck of dust and ran - congratulations! You got the most malicious pest of domestic plants - a spider mite.

What does a pest look like?

The spider mite on indoor plants is almost invisible. This is a tiny spider, 0.5-1mm in size, whose body is painted in brown, green, brown or gray.

It causes damage to plants during its nutrition. Unfortunately, adult ticks and their larvae feed on the cell sap, which they extract by piercing leaf plates with their jaws.

The leaves are first covered with small transparent dots, then turn yellow completely, and then dry and fly around. In this case, naturally, the plant ceases to develop normally, photosynthesis worsens and, in advanced cases, its death may occur.

Should there be a web? Despite the fact that the spider mite, judging from its name, is simply obliged to braid the plants with a web, it does not always do this.

Most species do secrete a thread-hardening secret, but sometimes in very small, inconspicuous quantities. Only with excessive overpopulation, when there are too many individuals, can they entangle the entire plant with cobwebs.

Where does he come from?

Sooner or later, any grower with an extensive collection of different plant species will face this scourge. Naturally, the question arises: where does he fall on the poor head of our favorite flowers? Well, firstly, the simplest: you can bring this infection from the store, along with a purchased new plant.

Also, the tick can get into the house from the street. Especially this misfortune haunts the inhabitants of the lower floors, under the windows of which there are trees - it is from them, on thin cobwebs, that tick colonies fly directly to our plants. Naturally, if the plants are on the balcony, then ticks will generally be easier to get on them.

And it happens so that in the midst of the heating season, in winter, when the balcony does not open at all and new plants are not bought, the spider mite on flowers appears in all its glory. Where from?

The fact is that with the onset of cold weather (or other unfavorable factors), female ticks can hibernate, called diapause. During this period they do not eat, do not manifest themselves in any way, but lie motionless lump somewhere in the thickness of the earth.

In order to decide how to deal with the spider mite, you need to learn more about the way it lives. This pest prefers a warm (above 27 degrees) place with low humidity. During its short life (1-1.5 months), the female may have time to lay several hundred eggs, from which young ticks will come out in 3-5 days.

This information is very important for poisoning pests - poison treatment should be timed to the moment the young generation leaves the eggs. Unfortunately, most modern drugs do not work on eggs.

Prevention

Recall that ticks prefer a dry place of residence. Therefore, so that your flowers do not become a tidbit for them, you should often perform preventive spraying with plain water.

If the spider mite on indoor plants already exists, then completely different measures should be taken.

How to get rid?

A tick is an insidious and inconspicuous enemy, so get ready that the fight against it will be long. First of all, all yellowed leaves should be cut off - they will not be restored, in addition, a significant part of the tick-borne population is concentrated on them. Throwing away these leaves, you will destroy 20-30% of the enemy tribe, and this is already a small but victory!

After that, carry the plant to the bathroom and under a stream of water, thoroughly wash the leaves and the stem so that the hated spiders carry off to the sewer. Now, after the plant dries, you should treat it with one of the selected anti-tick remedies.

The pot and the pallet are also processed without fail, the earth is spilled with a poisonous agent. Pallets can be thrown into a bucket of boiling water - the ticks just can not stand it.

Then a large bag (garbage, for example) is put on the plant along with the pot and tied so that a kind of steam room is formed - without air access. In such an environment, ticks will quickly die. When using modern chemicals, this happens within 1-3 hours.

In order for even those mites that were at the time of baiting in hard to reach places to die, you should hold the package on the plant for 1-2 days. Do not be afraid that the plant will suffocate, on the contrary, after such a sauna it will immediately look healthy. The only thing is, do not put the plant in a bag on a hot sunny windowsill so that it does not cook.

Everything, the spider mite on indoor plants is destroyed, you can breathe easy. Or not? It is unlikely that the struggle is not over yet, because the eggs remained alive and after 3-4 days young animals will hatch from them, which will continue to devour your plant.That is why bullying will need to be repeated 2 more times with an interval of 5-7 days.

Be sure to wash the windowsill, window panes, wash the curtains. Windows and windowsill can be washed with soap or rubbed with alcohol, and this should be done very thoroughly, literally pouring alcohol or soap foam into all cracks.

To the question of how to deal with the spider mite, you can get a lot of different answers, but in one opinion the opponents completely agree: this pest can be destroyed only if you take the problem and its solution seriously.

It is undesirable to carry out processing “through the sleeves” or not to complete the recommended 3-time course of bullying. In this situation, it is likely that the undetermined part of the ticks will become insensitive to poison and it will become much more difficult to get rid of pests.

For an effective fight, it is also important to choose the right spider mite drugs, which can be either simple “folk” remedies or chemical products.

Spider mite: how to fight, means and preparations

Spider mites multiply very quickly and instantly move from one plant to another. Pests feed on the contents of plant cells. The presence of ticks can be detected by the appearance on the leaves of the plant of white small dots on the underside of the plate and by the thinnest web.

In addition, a tick can infect a plant with incurable viral infections and gray rot spores. At home, in the garden and plants, plants damage several types of spider mites.

Ordinary (lat. Tetranychus urticae): the length of the female ordinary spider mite can be from 0.4 to 0.6 mm, males are usually shorter - from 0.3 to 0.45 mm. At the larval stage of development, ticks are transparent, colored in different colors: from pale green to greenish brown.

Large dark spots are clearly visible on the sides - blind bags of the middle intestine. The tick larvae have 6 legs, and adults have 8 translucent legs with tenacious claws. Spider mites live everywhere except Antarctica.

Red (lat. Tetranychus cinnabarinus). This pest damages agricultural and ornamental plants. In warm regions, he lives in open ground, and in the north - only indoors.

Atlantic (lat. Tetranychus atlanticus) - a ubiquitous tick species that damages cucumbers.

Turkestan (lat. Tetranychus turkestani) is a polyphage that feeds on both garden (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers) and ornamental plants.

Common pests from this family also include red-legged mites and Savzdarga. However, despite such a variety of pests, the measures for controlling spider mites are almost the same.

Preventative treatment

The main reason for the appearance of spider mites on plants is dry air, so the best preventive measure is spraying plants in dry weather.

However, care must be taken to ensure that water does not remain in the grooves and core of plants for a long time. You should be especially careful in winter, because in conditions of short daylight hours and low temperatures, at which indoor plants flow, water evaporates more slowly.

For the sake of getting rid of pests, it makes no sense to immerse the whole plant in water: ticks, in contact with water, are protected by air bubbles covering them.

To protect against spider mites, sometimes spraying indoor plants with undiluted medical alcohol is sometimes used, but care must be taken.

Spray with water in dry weather should be both indoor and garden plants. However, this procedure is effective only as a preventive measure, but if the spider mite has already settled on plants, completely different measures must be taken.

Folk remedies and chemicals

To combat spider mites, there is a wide selection of folk remedies - decoctions and infusions of plants that have insecticidal properties and are used for spraying. For example:

Processing plants with decoctions and infusions is carried out in the evening as a preventive measure or with a small number of ticks.

At home, folk remedies from poisonous plants are better not to use. Keep in mind that plant poisons are just as unsafe for humans as are chemicals, so be careful not to exceed the dosage when preparing them.

Since ticks, spiders and scorpions are not insects, it is useless to use insecticides against spider mites.

Effective drugs for arthropod pests are acaricides (Sunmayt, Demitan, Omayt, Flumayt, Floromayt, Nissoran, Bikol, Bitoksibacillin, Envidor, Apollo, Borneo) or insect acaricides (Akarin, Agravertin, Vertimek, Dursbanit, Karate, Karate, Nerate, Karate , Talstar, Fufanon, Oberon).All these drugs are used in strict accordance with the instructions.

At a temperature of 20 ºC, at least three treatments must be performed with an interval of 10 days, and at a temperature of about 30 ºC, 3-4 treatments are needed every 3-4 days, otherwise the females emerging from the eggs will have time to lay new eggs.

Unfortunately, among the listed drugs there are no ones that would be absolutely safe for humans, so it is better not to allow pests. Make it a rule to regularly inspect plants and carry out preventive spraying.

In the garden

Spider mite on cucumbers. The presence of a spider mite on cucumbers can be determined by white puncture points and a light, thin web. With a severe defeat, the leaves whiten completely. Pests accumulate on the leaves and shoots of the plant. How to process cucumbers from a spider mite?

To create unbearable conditions for ticks, on a cloudy day, water the bed abundantly, then immediately cover it with a film: under the coating, the air humidity will become very high, and this will greatly harm the spider mite.

With a significant lesion, you will have to process the cucumbers with acaricides. However, the appearance of mites on the bed with cucumbers can not be prevented if you annually change the plot for the crop, plant bushes according to the scheme developed by specialists without thickening the planting, and in autumn remove all plant debris from the bed and dig the soil.

Spider mite on pepper. On peppers, tetranic ticks are mainly parasitic. From their punctures on the leaves characteristic marbling is formed. Spider mites settle on pepper seedlings and on adult plants. Over time, the puncture points merge, and the affected leaves become brown.

Moving along the plant, ticks leave a spider web on leaves and stems. Plants that are heavily braided by the web dry out because photosynthesis and transpiration are reduced in them. The loss of the pepper crop with a strong defeat by the spider mite can reach 60%.

As in the case of other plants, favorable conditions for the appearance of spider mites on pepper are dry air, dehydration of plant tissues and too high a level of nitrogen in the soil.

Spider mites on peppers are controlled in every possible way: by removing the diseased leaves, and sometimes the whole plant, by spraying with water, insecticidal infusions and decoctions in the evenings, as well as, in case of strong occupation, by treating the peppers with chemicals.

From folk remedies, washing plants with a soap solution (bar of household soap per 10 liters of water), spraying with 96% alcohol, a decoction of black bleached, tobacco or garlic infusion are effective. Of the acaricides, Kleschevit, Apollo, Akarin, Actellik and Dicofol are considered the most effective 20%.

As soon as you notice discolored dots on the leaves of the eggplant, immediately start the fight against ticks. By what means to do this, you decide.

If there are few ticks, you can start with folk remedies less toxic to humans or use the biological method: run amblyseuses or phytoseyulyus, which can be purchased at garden centers, on a bed of predatory ticks. But if there are a lot of pests, do not waste time and immediately start processing eggplant with acaricides.

Spider mite on tomatoes. Appearing on tomatoes, spider mites bite through leaf plates, as a result of which they turn yellow and dry out. As a preventive measure, it is necessary to regularly weed the beds and remove damaged leaves and shoots from the bushes.

What folk remedies help get rid of ticks on tomatoes? Soap solution (1: 6), two percent solution of bleach, medical alcohol, black bleached infusion. Of the chemicals, Plant-Pin, Fitoverm, Actellik, Etisso, Apollo, Actaru, Anticlesch or Fufanon are best used.

On the flowers

Spider mite on roses. A spider mite on flowers is the same common occurrence as on vegetables, but of all garden flowers, the pest of roses is most attracted. Plain exhausted by improper care are the victims of spider mites in the first place: white dots appear on the leaves of roses, and with severe damage - whitish spots.

Then the leaves turn yellow and fall off, a spider web appears, and upon closer inspection, on the underside of the leaves you can see small moving points - spider mites.

Even the arrival of winter will not solve the problem: ticks wintered safely in the soil or under the leaves and in the spring again begin their destructive activities. Therefore, it is necessary to destroy ticks immediately and for sure, using the acaricides Neoron, Fitoverm, Actellik and the like.

When preparing solutions for the treatment of roses, strictly follow the instructions, since acaricides contain substances hazardous to humans and pets.

In the garden

Spider mite on currant. A spider mite that appears on the leaves of black, red or white currant can threaten a complete loss of the crop of berries. If before the appearance of the ticks the berries managed to be tied, they are not in danger: the ticks will harm the leaves, but they will not significantly affect the quantity and quality of the crop, so you can fight them with folk remedies.

With a small number of spider mites, infusions and decoctions of insecticidal plants will do just fine. But if there are a lot of pests and if they appeared before flowering or before the ovary ended, then the ripening of the berries may be in jeopardy.

If ticks are found on currants before flowering, feel free to use acaricides to kill pests. Keep in mind that white and red currants are more vulnerable than black currants. So:

1. first remove from the bush and burn absolutely all the leaves damaged by the tick, then water the bushes abundantly, washing off with a strong stream of the remaining insects;
2. be sure to remove the cobweb, otherwise it will turn into a water repellent barrier;
3. spraying the bush with water gives a good result, if immediately after this, briefly wrap the plant with a film, creating under it eighty percent air humidity unbearable for ticks;
4. put jars of turpentine or ammonia around the bush and cover the bush with a film: turpentine and ammonia will quickly kill ticks;
5. folk remedies will almost certainly cope with a small number of pests, but if the bush is severely damaged, then, without wasting time, proceed to treat currants with acaricides.

If you notice spider mites on gooseberries, use the same means for controlling them as for killing pests on currants, since these two cultures are close relatives.

Spider mite on the grape. Grapes, in addition to ordinary spider mites, are affected by red fruit mites and sometimes hornbeam spider mites. The newly hatched red fruit tick larvae can be seen on the underside of young vine leaves in early spring.

With early damage to grapes by ticks, its leaves practically do not grow and are deformed, often curl, acquire a light brown color and fall prematurely. The degree of damage is affected by the variety of grapes, nutrition, bush location and weather conditions.

Before budding, it makes sense to treat tick-affected grapes with Nitrofen or DNOC, after removing diseased leaves and removing severely damaged bark. After the start of growth, they resort to treatment of the plant with Neoron, Fozalon, Acrex, Conflict, Celtan or Rogor.

If the drug has a short duration, you need to repeat the treatment after 10-12 days. You should know that spider mites are capable of developing resistance to drugs, so when processing alternate acaricides with various active substances.

Gardeners have revealed this pattern: the older the bed with strawberries, the more damage the pest can cause. Most dangerous ticks for bushes 3-4 years old.

Infection of strawberries with spider mites occurs through seedlings. Pests can get to the site with shoes and clothes of people. Peak population growth occurs in August and September. You can detect ticks on strawberries by the following signs:

When starting to fight ticks on strawberries, you should know that they concentrate in places difficult to process, so it will not work to completely destroy them. But in order to restrain the development of the population and save the crop, it is necessary to combat spider mites.

The best way to kill the pest is to run predator ticks onto the site. The biological enemies of ticks can greatly reduce their numbers.

You can use folk remedies, for example, spraying with onion or garlic infusion: once at the very beginning of the growing season and twice after harvesting, each time after processing, covering the strawberries with a film for several hours.

Spider mite on apple tree. With a strong occupation by spider mites, an apple tree may lose up to half of its leaves by mid-summer. As a result, its productivity is significantly reduced.

Therefore, as soon as you notice the presence of pests on the tree, proceed to a decisive fight against them. Of the folk remedies, the most effective is the tobacco solution, which is used to treat the apple tree twice every week.

In advanced cases, you will have to spray the apple tree twice with Nitrofen or Decis: after the appearance of the ovaries and a month before the harvest. In autumn, you need to remove from the tree all the fallen leaves and fruits, cut old and diseased branches in which ticks can winter, and burn all these plant debris.

In the greenhouses

Spider mite on seedlings. A spider mite in a greenhouse with cucumbers and other plants in one year can produce up to 20 generations of pests.Spider mites penetrate the greenhouse and spread through it in search of better conditions and the most suitable crop.

Most often, their victims are cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, and even in the seedling stage. Along the main leaf vein of the leaves, tiny, like pinpricks, yellowish dots appear, which eventually become colorless, and then a subtle web appears along which ticks easily move.

Pests are concentrated in the upper part of the plant, sucking out the cellular juice from the leaves, located on their lower side.

To reduce the risk of spider mites on seedlings in the greenhouse, seedlings should be alternated during planting: seedlings of cucumbers with tomatoes, cabbage or leafy vegetables.

Inspect the seedlings as often as possible, and as soon as you find ticks, remove and burn the damaged leaves, and in case of a significant lesion, treat the seedlings with Bitoxibacillin, Fitoverm or colloidal sulfur, and if these drugs do not help, use a broad-acting acaricide solution - Actellika, for example.

Spider mite on adult plants. It is impossible to expel spider mites from the greenhouse with ultraviolet rays, infusions and decoctions of plants or by spraying with water. To save the crop, you will have to use acaricides, treating the plants with their solutions every two weeks until the pest is completely defeated.

With a small number of spider mites in the greenhouse, you can try to cope with them with the help of their biological enemies - predator mites. There will be no harm to vegetable plants from phytoseyulus: as soon as there are no spider mites in the greenhouse, it will die from hunger.

If you have to use acaricides, strictly follow the manufacturer's instructions and safety rules for working with toxic drugs indoors.

During the period of planting vegetables, maintain a high humidity in the greenhouse due to timely watering and frequent spraying of plants with water. Increases resistance to pests and diseases by weekly two-minute treatment of the greenhouse with ultraviolet rays.

On indoor plants

Spider mite on an orchid. To protect orchids from spider mites, you need to create conditions for them as close as possible to natural ones. And even if you succeed, you need to monitor the condition of the flowers all the time, because the sooner you can detect pests, the easier and faster you will get rid of them.

The optimal conditions for the life of ticks is an air humidity of 30-40% at a temperature of about 27 ºC.

After tick bites, a silver gleam appears on the orchid leaf, then the leaf turns yellow and falls off. You can find out if there are ticks on the orchid by putting a piece of apple on the substrate: after a while all the pests will gather on it.

Every new flower before you bring home, you must definitely inspect. To prevent the spread of ticks, wash orchids regularly under a hot (relatively) shower.

Orchids with hard leaves, such as Cattleya, can be wiped with a cotton swab dipped in medical alcohol, but first check the effect of alcohol on a small area of ​​the old sheet.

Since folk remedies are far from always effective, and you don’t have to eat orchids, it makes sense, without wasting time, to treat acaricides affected by ticks.

Spider mite on a lemon. You can determine that spider mites are wound on your indoor lemon by the appearance of yellow dots on its leaves and yellowing of their tips.

If you put a white sheet in the pot and shake the plant, and then examine the sheet under a magnifying glass, you can see ticks. At a later stage, a thin web may appear on the lemon.

The danger to the lemon tree is not only a tick, but also as a peddler of viral diseases, from which, alas, no medicine has been invented yet. That is why, at the first signs of the presence of spider mites, measures should be taken immediately.

You can protect lemon and other indoor plants from spider mites by placing a pot of geraniums next door that repels these pests. Rosemary oil helps to protect the lemon from ticks, the aroma of which the pests do not tolerate: dilute a few drops of oil in warm water and sprinkle the lemon.

It scares off ticks and strengthens the immunity of plants by frequent, but short-term exposure to ultraviolet rays. To do this, turn on the lamp for a couple of minutes every day.

But if as a result of all these attempts to get rid of ticks completely you failed, treat the plant with an acaricidal preparation: Fitoverm, Aktellik or Demitan.

In addition, the drug is addictive, and you can use it only once. For subsequent treatments, which are carried out several times every 7-10 days, you will have to purchase other acaricides.

Spider mite - how to fight

If you have already found a tick on indoor flowers, do not rush to run for chemistry. The fact is that ticks have incredible resistance to chemicals. With the tremendous speed of generational change, after a month, repeated treatments will not bring success.

And more than two times the same pesticide does not make sense. This is especially true for newly acquired flowers in the store (they are often processed at the base).

What to do? Firstly, the microclimate, or rather the temperature and humidity of the air, is a decisive factor for the rate of tick propagation. Spider mites love to be warm and dry. On hot days in the summer, they breed at a frantic speed.

The only way out in the case of spider mites is an air humidifier, wide trays of water, table fountains and hanging batteries with damp sheets in winter. But increasing humidity with these methods will not kill ticks, but only slow down the rate of their development.

Therefore, if it is permissible, plants need to arrange a hot shower. Most of the plants on our windowsills easily tolerate a hot shower if it is short-lived. But the soul mites washes off the leaves and scalds, including the corpuscles. The temperature of the shower can be around 45-48 ° С (at temperatures above 40 ° С, the development of ticks stops).

In this case, you must try to ensure that water jets fall not only from above, but also on the back of the leaves.If the plants are planted in loose soil with drainage and holes at the bottom of the pot, then the moisture from the shower is not scary for them, just leave the pots without pallets so that the glass water.

Before the next watering, touch the ground with your finger and make sure that it has dried out in the upper third of the pot (or dried completely if the pots are in the room at a temperature below 16 ° C).

Watering time is approximately 2-5 minutes. Some plants tolerate a hot shower very well, even with temperatures up to 52 ° C, for example, monstera, benjamin ficus, hibiscus.

There are plants that cannot be wetted by leaf, for example, senpolia (and the rest of the gesneriaceae), some other plants. Basically, these are indoor flowers with thin delicate leaves, easily prone to decay at the slightest dampness.

and they can be worn in the bathroom, but not in the shower, but in the steam room. In this case, you turn on a very hot shower (the maximum possible), but do not direct it at the flowers, but leave it to pour into the bathroom.

Repeat a hot shower every 3-5 days. You can do without chemicals altogether if you wash the plants in the shower about 3-4 times a week, and then every 3-4 weeks.

You can increase the effectiveness of a hot shower if you first wash the leaves with soap foam. As a detergent suitable: green soap, tar soap, laundry soap and, at worst, ordinary shampoo.

Green or tar soap should be applied with foam on the leaves and left for 5 minutes. Then rinse. Shampoos can be washed off immediately. However, do not forget that ticks are extremely tenacious and a hot shower is not a panacea! This is just a safe way to try out first.

Remember that drugs that kill ticks are not called insecticides, but acaricides - they are anti-arthropod agents. In extreme cases, there are drugs that work against insect pests (thrips, aphids) and against ticks.

They are called insectoacaricides (for example, phytoverm). Each drug should have an instruction, indicating the consumption rate. If a tick is not mentioned among these pests, then this drug will not help, do not even try, just breathe in again with toxic substances.

Very often they try to kill a tick with a common actar - this drug does not work on a tick. If it seemed to you that after spraying the ticks became less, then the point is not in the drug, but in the very fact of spraying with water.

For example, biological products usually destroy only adults, but do not affect eggs and larvae. In addition, many intestinal acaricides become simply useless at the moment when the tick is at rest before another molt and does not feed on plant juice.

In this case, it is better to repeat the reprocessing after 3-4 days, when the undestroyed larvae pass into the nymph stage, but do not yet form adult individuals to postpone new larvae.

You can alternate spraying with acaricide and a hot shower. By the way, with regard to spraying, the wettability of the leaves should be as best as possible.

Therefore, for some plants, for example, ficus benjamin varieties with curly and curled leaves, it is better not to spray, but immerse the crown in a solution with acaricide for 1-2 minutes (in a bucket of solution).

With a large mite lesion, it makes sense to alternate drugs from different chemical groups. For example, Apollo (clofentesin) and Bi-58 (dimethoate), or neoron (brompropylate) and actellic (pyrimiphos-methyl).

Remember that ticks are spread at a distance by a blow of wind, the slightest air movement, so if a tick appears on one plant, you need to process all the plants on the windowsill, and possibly in the apartment. It is not necessary that plants living in another room become infected, but prevention does not hurt.

I have had cases when ticks appeared on only two plants standing on a balcony, fully covered with flowers. It is incredible, but nevertheless, if you isolate infected people in time (at the slightest yellow spot), then long tedious procedures can be avoided.

When transplanting plants, it is better to de-identify the land. The best way is in the microwave for 10 minutes (moisten the ground slightly). True throughout the apartment will be the smell of pretty earth. And this does not guarantee that the tick does not appear in the spring-summer season during ventilation. By the way, ticks fly to the high floor (even 14 or 16).

Necessary recommendations

If a spider mite was found on a houseplant, certain recommendations should be followed.

If the plant is completely affected, it is advisable to throw it away so that other flowers can survive. It is necessary to pull out all weeds in which spider mites can hide.

Insect characterization

The spider mite, a photo of which can be seen in various directories, is almost invisible, since its size is only 0.5 - 1 mm. His body can be painted in brown, green, brown or gray.

The leaves are first covered with small transparent dots, then begin to turn yellow, dry and fly around. All this leads to the cessation of the normal development of a houseplant, the deterioration of photosynthesis, and in more advanced cases, it dies.

Does the tick form a web?

Since this insect is called "spider web", many flower growers are sure that it necessarily braids plants with cobwebs. In fact, this does not always happen.

Many individuals secrete a secret that solidifies in the form of threads, but often in very small quantities. Only when there are quite a lot of insects do they entangle the entire plant with cobwebs.

How to get rid of a plant pest

You can fight these insects by various means. The easiest way to get rid of pests is a natural cleaning, which consists in regular washing and rubbing of flowers. To do this, use ordinary water, into which several drops of a mild detergent for dishes are added.

The sponge is moistened in water and wiped separate leaves with it, after which water is sprayed from the spray bottle throughout the plant, especially trying to get to the bottom of the leaves. You should also handle the pan, pot and window sill.

If after a week the spider mites do not disappear, the soap solution is applied again. Such a tool is not all plants tolerate equally well, so before applying it, you need to test the flower.To do this, a soap solution is applied to a small part of the sheet and the reaction is monitored.

Since the spider mite does not tolerate high humidity, it can be combated with frequent watering and spraying the flower. After each moisturizing, the plant is covered with a transparent bag and left for several days.

In conditions of high humidity, the insect dies. To avoid the greenhouse effect and the flower did not receive sunburn, it should be placed in a shaded place.

But it is necessary to handle the flowers with this agent very carefully, because it is unsafe for people and animals. Sparing acaricides include:

Such drugs contribute to the destruction of sleeping female spider mites and eggs of future larvae, therefore, they are used repeatedly to achieve the desired result. If the room temperature is below +18 degrees, these drugs will be ineffective.

The plant can be sprayed with chemicals such as:

• difocol;
• dienochlor;
• azocyclotin;
• fenbutatin.

It is not recommended to use the same tool more than four times, since spider mites begin to get used to it and develop immunity.

You can make special herbal tea yourself at home, which is used as an acaricide.

Filter, then liquid soap is added to tea and poured into a spray bottle. With this solution, the lower part of the leaves is sprayed every three days for two weeks.

Against the spider mite at home, essential oils and organic salts help well. Rosemary oil is used as an organic pesticide.

It is necessary to dissolve a small amount of oil in water and spray on infected flowers. The peculiarity of this tool is that it has a detrimental effect on ticks, but leaves other insects alive.

The following insects are considered good helpers in the destruction of the spider mite:

Since pesticides kill all insects in a row, the spider mite population begins to grow because of this. Therefore, it is better to abandon the use of pesticides such as imidocloprid, malathion and carbaryl.

Preventative measures

If soil was purchased for planting or transplanting indoor plants, it should not be brought into the room with flowers, but should be poured into containers in another place, for example, in the bathroom. After that, it is fried in a microwave or oven. Do the same with wood bark, pebbles and sand.

Acquired plants must first be brought to the bathroom and subjected to water procedures, and then treated with acaricide. The effect will increase several times if, after such processing, the plant is placed in plastic bags for three days. After this, it is advisable to repeat this treatment, keeping the plants “quarantined” all this time.

Thus, we have figured out what constitutes a spider mite, a photo of which can be seen in numerous directories. It is necessary to get rid of it as soon as it is discovered and it is necessary to deal with it in all seriousness.

If you relate to this "through the sleeves", then not destroyed part of the insects will develop immunity to the poison and it will be much more difficult to fight them.