Red Spider Mites: was Marathon (Was: RE: aphids and mandevilla/ nowmealy bugs)
Gerry/Bob O'Neill wrote:
> little trouble with RSM and now they are a major problem. I give my
> hibiscus a shower just about every day and spray every couple of weeks with
> a mixture of Safer's Soap and Sunspray Hort Oil, but if I miss a spraying
> the RSM just explode.
I was having a problem last year with Red Spider Mites on a few of my
roses. A local nursery owner told me that I wasn't watering them enough
and that the RSM only bothered stressed plants. The solution was to
hose off the roses then water well.
I washed and watered them every other day for a week, then twice a week
thereafter during the hot dry spells and haven't had RSM on the roses
for a year now.
I gave my father three one gallon pots of brugmansia and while in his
greenhouse they too were infested with RSM. I told him to bathe and
water them more often and the RSM disappeared. Neither of us ever used
any insecticides.
You might try keeping the plants wetter for a while and see if that
helps.
Now White Fly, beats me, drive me nuts in spring. The only thing I know
to do is to constantly wash off the white sticky stuff and keep them
disrupted. That seems to help more than anything else I have tried.
Year before last the WF were so horrible on some large variegated
privits (I hated them anyway) that I literally yanked them out of the
ground bare root, scraped a hole in the woods and planted them there.
No hole prep, no composts, just pure sandy soil, hoped they would die.
They lived and the WF hasn't found them yet.
As with RSM, WF seem to infest stressed plants. After moving the
privits and getting the bed ready for new plants I discovered that the
soil there was terrible, totally depleted of all organic matter, fine
blow sand. The roses and loropetalum I planted there are not bothered
by WF.
Anyway, just some observations.
Linda
San Antonio, TX
zone 9 heat zone 150 <G>
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