The first time I found spider mites in my indoor garden I had no idea what they were. We did not have the resources we have today at our fingertips and it was a devastating experience. I simply did not learn enough, fast enough, to make the difference. After that experience I sat down at my kitchen table with multiple leaves infested with mites. I began applying multiple products and household remedies and observing the live mites and the eggs for day after day after day. I did this first hand and learned a lot about spider mites in the process.
The two spotted spider mite is oval in shape, about 1/50 inch long and may be brown or orange-red, but a green, greenish-yellow or an almost translucent color is the most common.
The female is about 0.4 mm in length with an elliptical body that bears 12 pairs of dorsal setae. Overwintering females are orange to orange-red. The body contents (large dark spots) are often visible through the transparent body wall. Since the spots are accumulation of body wastes, newly molted mites may lack the spots. The male is elliptical with the caudal end tapering and smaller than the female. The axis of knob of aedeagus is parallel or forming a small angle with axis of shaft.
The key to killing spider mites, in my humble opinion, is as simple as follows.
1) The life cycle of a mite is 5 days. We need to treat them at least twice in this 5 day period to even consider getting ahead of their life cycle. The mites reproduce exponentially at very rapid rates. Understanding this is important.
2) There is no single product that kills mites and slows reproduction well enough to do the job once you are infested. Many products will prevent them from happening at all though if you are diligent and keep a clean garden.
3)First we spray the Azamax on day 1, then we spray the Einstein Oil on day 2.
4)We give our plants day 3, and day 4 off.
5) Day 5 we spray Azamax or a different pesticide.
6) Day 6 we spray Einstein Oil again.
7) Repeat this cycle at least 3 times. Your bugs will be gone if you were diligent in spraying and used a quality sprayer. We prefer to use an electric atomizer. Hand pump sprayers are good too if they are kept clean and maintained well.
In some cases when we have let our mite issues go too far, it is best to kill our plants and start over. Plants that are still in vegetative growth can usually be saved. Plants in flowering with mites so bad that the buds have webs over them are usually too far gone to waste our time and energy on. Hopefully the population is concentrated on 1 or a few plants and not your whole flowering room. The easiest solution is to harvest what is close enough and let the rest go. Early in flowering we can get away with heavily spraying and treating our plants and still make it harvest but that is a gamble most beginners probably should not take.
The easiest solution to bugs is prevention. Always has been and always will be. Spray once a week with a quality product like Einstein oil and save yourself the headaches!