Mites and soilless grows

TheFertilizer;2906640 said:

Pyrethrin is one of those that needs repeated follow up treatments every 2-3 days to kill successive breeding genreations. Mites lay eggs when they die, so when you spray them they essentially lay as much as they possibly can, and it basically does nothing to their eggs. You can go through and try to smoosh them and clean them up with soap or whatever, but like you said you only have to miss one leaf. The key to contact poisons is successive treatments, and it's tricky to time it right.

I used your recipe for neem Weaslecracker. I think it was you who told me anyway... Been a while. 1 tsp palmolive and 2 tsp of neem oil for spray, and 1 tsp palmolive and 4 tsp of neem for a root drench. The soap is such a key thing to using neem properly, it's a huge difference. I like to mix it up in a shot glass and mix it up until its a nice milky color. I kind of prefer the root drench, I find it pretty easy to burn leaves with neem. I never pH'd my mix before but maybe that's why.

What I think would be most effective would be a mixture of insecticidal soap, pyrethrin and neem oil. The insecticidal soap would act as an emulsifier and a contact agent, and it degrades the eggs more effectively than neem or pyrethrin. Pyrethrin is essentially the Agent Orange in this situation, it kills everything living. Meanwhile the neem is kind of like, salting the earth so nothing else can grow.

Also I've heard that russet mites are extremely resistant to most of these insecticides, buddy of mine tried everything we've talked about, the only thing that worked was Monterey Miticide with Spinosad. Aparently it's the spinosad that kills them.

Anyway I had the same idea as you, was thinking about going soilless, but my buddy uses Sunshine #4 and I think that's soilless... And it didn't do him any good.

Oh, be sure to use 100% cold-pressed neem oil. I like Einstein oil, but I think Dyna Gro makes some that's good too.

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