Most organic gardener’s freak when a large infestation of any damaging pests decide to take residence in their garden. Now imagine an organic (mostly) gardener who refuses to use most OMRI certified (organic) sprays, due to the fact that most of them have quite a few warnings to your health. If it’s bad for me to touch it, I don’t want to use it on my plants/ground. So taking this route, you can only imagine my level of freak out when I realized that spider mites were taking over just about every plant I had growing, especially my prized heirloom tomatoes.
Those of you who don’t you who don’t know what spider mites are, are probably lucky enough to live with a decent level of humidity. Spider mites are filthy little bastards (can you feel the love?) who thrive and have population explosions in arid climates such as as mine. They’re not even cool enough to be spiders! They are these nasty, microscopic mites who spin tiny webs on the underside of leaves, lay eggs, and suck juices right out of the plant. Most times you won’t even notice them, till extensive damage has been done; seeing tiny webs or a weird sort of tiny speckling on the leaves. If you have seen this, congratulations you have them too!
Soap water sprays (I prefer Dr. Bronner’s organic peppermint soap) have often worked for me. It doesn’t have much of the residual effect like a lot of horticultural oil sprays do, but if the sprayer drips on me, or one of my animals, etc. I don’t have to freak out, just enjoy the smell of candy canes. 🙂 However since I choose to go this completely non toxic route, my work is a bit more labor intensive…..checking the plants often and continually spraying them, over and over.
This process may not be for you, and that’s okay. There are many other organic ways to get rid of the little bastards. Being a naturally clumsy and accident prone person, being obsessed with gardening (and all the dangerous tools) has naturally raised my risk plenty. I don’t need the help of chemicals, to add any extra reason for concern or panic. 🙂 Maybe it’s just me, but I love being able to go out into the garden in a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, without a care or concern about washing off anything that spilled on me, or being forced to wear long shirts, pants, masks, etc. Gardening is all about preference, and this just happens to be mine.
Happy Gardening all!!
P.S. If you see anything you’d like to have something wrote about, or have any questions, feel free to contact me. 🙂
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