spider mites on tomatoes

[spookybird]

Help.
Our early girl planted in the spring is putting on tomatoes again but is covered with mites.
How do we get rid of them??

We replanted for fall and the new plants don't have the YET!!!
Thank you!

 

[flowerbug]

Help.
Our early girl planted in the spring is putting on tomatoes again but is covered with mites.
How do we get rid of them??

We replanted for fall and the new plants don't have the YET!!!
Thank you!

where are you located?

are you sure they are doing damage? many mites won't hurt plants. often you can find predatory mites that will eat the others and that's the best approach IMO.

another approach is to drench the plants when you water them and to knock back a damaging over population by using an insecticideal soap which won't harm the plant.

we have mites all over the place around here and i leave them alone.

 

[spookybird]

NEOK 6b where it's wet and humid!!!!
I've been spraying them.
Thanks I'll just leave them. The plants look ugly but the tomatoes are fine.

 

[flowerbug]

NEOK 6b where it's wet and humid!!!!
I've been spraying them.
Thanks I'll just leave them. The plants look ugly but the tomatoes are fine.

if you are near a woodland area you can try to innoculate your garden with other mites by taking some detritus from the woods and putting it in your garden. i've not had to do that here but i do know some people who've tried it with decent results.

we get late blight on the tomatoes here, the plants always look like crap towards the end of summer, but the fruits are just fine up until they start getting thinner walls when it gets colder and then the frosts come and they're done for the season.

 

[spookybird]

No we live in town surrounded by houses.
Thank you.

 

[flowerbug]

No we live in town surrounded by houses.
Thank you.

any gardeners in the area? we often are quite happy to help someone else out.

 

[digitS']

During the heat of every summer, the roses were attacked by spider mites in the greenhouse where I worked. Some years, they have been absolutely terrible in my current dahlia garden.

This year, they haven't been ... It's an especially hot and dry summer. The new distance from evergreen trees should have helped. There is no longer a row of a neighbor's arborvitae beside the dahlias. The evergreens can be absolutely covered with spider mites, some years.

In the greenhouse, we considered a good hosing-down with water worth as much as a commercial insecticide. Tomato plants are not roses. Foliage would be damaged if they had the blasting we gave those bushes.

@flowerbug has it right about insecticidal soap. There are probably other horticultural oils that would work. All contact bug killers, tho. It would be hard to reach all the mites with any spray. I bet that they have enormous reproductive abilities.

High humidity is a near unknown to me although the greenhouse was certainly more humid than my outdoors currently. Mites have sure been bothersome for me in other years. .Good Luck, Spookybird.

digitS'
hoping to not jinx the garden

 

[flowerbug]

@digitS' the local greenhouse guy uses a full suit and breathing gear and burns sulphur to fumigate his greenhouses. he says it works, but plays havoc on some of the exposed metals yet for what he has to do anyways it works out as cheap as anything else he could do. what i like is that it is an elemental thing and your byproducts are sulfuric acid and whatever that may corrode, but it's not going to be a major nerve poison, etc. to anything else even if it gets in the groundwater. sulfur seems actively bound by all sorts of molecules...

i do not recommend burning sulfur to just anyone though but consider it something interesting since you mention having worked in greenhouses.

 

[digitS']

We did that also, @flowerbug - as a fumigate for mildew. Winter-time ... it was like entering the gates of Hell to come to work some mornings! I wonder what the owners thought if they knew that we opened vents all over the greenhouses to allow those sulfur fumes (and heated air) to (somewhat) escape.

The junior owner even tried some synthetic fungicide in the pans. That was just before I had a conversation with them about the use of a different banned pesticide. It had been banned for indoor use although still used on Christmas trees and ... fields used for bluegrass seed production. Cute little back channel supply they had going. Of course, the greenhouse owners never had to actually work in the greenhouses. I quit within a couple of months of these shenanigans.

Oh well. The longest-term employee is still around and in his 80's. Junior owner outlived his grandparents and parents and drives a very expensive car with a disabled license on it. Business is something other than greenhouses for him now. Tisk

Steve