My Worst Nightmeire, solved hopefully.

scarecrow · Oct 20, 2007

Ok it happened, I noticed little spider webs, and little bastards running around. As you might allready know spider mites are impossible to get rid of, or are they?

This is the black pearl pepper I got from the farmers market, this is the last time I buy a live plant from anywhere! Luckily it didn’t spread to any other plants.

Here is what I did to kill the little bastards. Muahahahaha.
Just wanted to share my experience, has anybody done this before?

I took a plastic lid and cut it and placed it on the top of my potting soil to hold its soil in place. like so...

Then I took a 5 gal bucket and filled it up with water, and submerged the whole pepper plant underwater for 1 hour. I think you can do this for more or less?

Then doing it again with the pot submerged with a rock to hold it down. This kills any Mites that may be in the soils. Often spraying the top of the water to wash off any mites that may float.

So far no sign of them, I might repeat this process again. I will keep this plant quarantined for now.

DevilDuck · Oct 20, 2007

Keep an eye on the plant for signs of over watering....!

scarecrow · Oct 20, 2007

DevilDuck said:
Keep an eye on the plant for signs of over watering....!

no kidding, more worried about the bugs. lol. the root system is pretty good in this one..

Omri · Oct 20, 2007

Drowning them would not be first choice, but let's hope it worked.

scarecrow · Oct 20, 2007

Omri said:
Drowning them would not be first choice, but let's hope it worked.

What would you recommend?

Well it didn’t hurt the plant. Just the mites. over watering is not an issue with house fan next to it, and good root system. May need to fertilize again.

bentalphanerd · Oct 20, 2007

Never seen anything like it!

Let us know how it turns out scarecrow.

Awesome

scarecrow · Oct 20, 2007

bentalphanerd said:
Never seen anything like it!

Let us know how it turns out scarecrow.

Awesome

yeah i will do, just something I have allways wanted to try.

wordwiz · Oct 23, 2007

DDT?

When I moved in this house 20 years ago, cockroaches (which also seem impossbile to eradicate) owned the place. I could put my hand down on the kitchen counter - in broad daylight) and kill 10 of them. I don't have a clue how the people living here could stand the filth, but I was not about to. Fortunately, I still had a can with quite a bit of the banned pesticide in it. They wer no match.

I wouldn't recommend spraying plants with it, though we used it to kill potato bugs. Dad would set a row aside that I didn't spray and we would eat them as they would be ready to dig. The others sat for at least eight weeks. Okay, so I have a third eye and a brother can hold four cans of beer - one in each hand, but outside of these trivial things, nothing else bad seems to have happened in the last 40 years.

scarecrow · Oct 26, 2007

Interesting wordwiz. Man I hate bugs. Especially this time of year. Just wanted to post my progress on this. So far I haven’t seen any bugs on this plant, but a few webs, I think these maybe left over from before, maybe not. I will keep lookout, that’s all I can do until I get a microscope. I had about 6 or 7 leafs drop off, most likely because of over watering, now its drying out pretty quick, and recovering nicely. Even if I didn’t rid myself of these bugs it gave the pepper a fighting chance until I get a "spray on" & "water in" of some kind. I just hate doing anything un-organic, try to keep it as natural as possible.

scarecrow · Oct 28, 2007

Nope this is a waste of time, don’t try it. I think the eggs re-hatched or something. needs a water in and spray on solution. I would rather kill it, and start the plant from seed. Damn spider mites!

bentalphanerd · Oct 28, 2007

scarecrow said:
Nope this is a waste of time, don’t try it. I think the eggs re-hatched or something. needs a water in and spray on solution. I would rather kill it, and start the plant from seed. Damn spider mites!

Ahh well, nice try. Try Pyrethrum spray. Give it a good coating and again a few days later. Its safe for everything except insects.

scarecrow · Oct 28, 2007

bentalphanerd said:
Ahh well, nice try. Try Pyrethrum spray. Give it a good coating and again a few days later. Its safe for everything except insects.

Thanks, I will check that out, think I have heard of that before.

I think this would of worked if I washed out all the old soil, and then started with new.

Not sure where spider mites lay there eggs?

I am from Las Vegas, Neveda where all you have to worry about is gnats.. indoors anyways. lol