cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17588319
[Image description: a thicc green hornworm hanging onto the stem of a tomato plant. The hornworm is speckled with little white dots, has eyespots and angular white stripes down his side, and the namesake sharp little spike of a horn on its butt.]
Is safers soap something you would be interested in maybe using? It’s safe on vegetables after washing them.
Yep, I’ve tried various soaps and all kinds of oils, tried regularly spraying down the leaves to keep them dust free and the humidity up, tried removing plants at the first sign of infestation, all of it seemingly futile under the literal avalanche of mites I get every summer. If I miss a few days of these preventative measures, my poor tomatoes will have leaves gone from a slight sign of damage to a fully webbed death. And it’s not like my plants are water starved either, I use drip irrigation under thick mulch, so the soil stays moist even on the hottest days.
It’s been really constraining on my growing season. I’m often able to get plants in the ground around mid-February and get a good harvest in May, but June/July is spent just watching all my plants die a lingering infested death. I’m in 10a, so I should easily be able to get a second summer crop in, but new seedlings planted at the end of spring seem to fare even worse than their established brethren. Hence why I’ve finally decided to spend the $$$ on predators, really hoping that their population establishes and tames the micro menace.
Shit that’s rough, is it localized to just you? Or do your neighbors get it as well?
Hard to judge, as not one of my next door neighbors is interested in gardening, despite my efforts at offering seeds/seedlings/help.
I haven’t gotten to really connect with any gardening groups in my area, but the handful of folks I have talked to also have problems with spider mites, though not sure if to quite such a severe degree.
