Spider mites

Soon is the time of the year when these nasty suckers become a real problem. We overwinter many of our Passifloras indoors under artificial light. Outdoors the rest of the year, the minute amount of spider mites is really not an issue. We have tried some miticide, and predatory mites last year, but neither did as much as I would have liked, with the latter seeming like it made it worse.

What do the pros do? I would love to hear any ideas that have worked for you. Being that they are indoors, spraying them off every day with a hose is not an option. They can, however, be brought out approximately once per week for any maintenance.

All help is appreciated.

I use a combination of equal parts insecticidal soap, neem oil, and giving up. I guess I need to be more diligent, but it's hard to get every spot they may be lurking and they eventually come back. All my vines get so tangled up that taking them out isn't a possibility. All my plants seem to have varying degrees of affected leaves, but as long as they are still flowering I haven't worried about it.

hallo,

I think spider mites are one of the most hated issues in the cultivating passiflora. I have lost some of my plants by spider mites. I have tested several methods (beginning from spraying soft soap and ending with hard chemical sprays) but in my opinion the most important thing is that you will perform your action in a concerted way. It is not effective to spray some of your plants and a week later the spider mites of the neighbour plant migrates again on the "cleaned" plant. This was my bad experience so I had spider mites for a long time. Some months ago before taking back from the balcony to my flat I put all plants into the bath tub and give them a warm (not too hot) shower which flushes the most of the spider mites into the drain. After drying (the next day) the plants were all treated complete with a spray. After a week all plants were treated again with this spray. Since this action I haven´t seen spider mites any more but I check the leaves nearly daily if maybe one mite or egg has survived. I believe that I will encounter spider mites again but not in the same degree as before. The most important think was, that I cleaned all plants within one day. O.K. in my case it was easy because I have only 20. What can people do when they have ca. 100 and more ? They must do this within their holidays

The spray I used was "Kanemite SC" with Acequinocyl as active ingredient. It is a new agent and especially created against resistent spider mites. When my bottle is empty and when its necessary (the next spiders will come surely) I will use an agent with another active substance to avoid resistences.

Bye

georgios

About using a spray against /to kill spidermites,you have to do it three times with one week between it.
So when you start on saterday , you do it again next saterday and thre thirth saterday.
And only one time a year with the same product(resistance)
That's how we do it in Belgium.When you want to do it again in the same year ,you need an compleet different product;
Francois