Look What The Wind Blew Onto My Tomatoes-Spider Mites

Both the tomato plants on the patio are growing fast and furiously. I was watering them yesterday when I decided the container grown tomato needed some pruning.

So I brought the tomato plant cage and all over to the table and started trimming. As I clipped and trimmed I suddenly had that feeling. You know that one where your skin crawls as you see bugs running amuk over your plants.

When I looked closely it was clear. The spider mites had moved in on the latest breeze and found a satisfactory, no make that ideal home. Everyone of those little white specks in the photo was a bug. The plant was overrun.

Spider mites are obnoxious little bugs that suck the life out of tomato plants. Hot dry weather encourages the spider mites to grow and take over. And take over they had.

So off I went to find the solution. Some of the reports I read were dire. Tomato plants killed, devasted by the spider mites. Others were more optimistic. Solutions were offered from the opportunistic bugs, to soaps to a 1:1 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water to a no longer sold miticide.

Other treatments and preventives include frequent misting with cold water. Not a problem as the hose doesn't deliver anything but. So for the past day I've been misting the tops and bottoms of the leaves with cold water.  The number of spider mites is decreasing.

Early tomorrow morning I plan to spray the plants with some Ivory soap mixed in water. You need to spray the soap mixture first thing in the day before the sun hits the plants.  I'll just need a couple of drops of Ivory in the water to smother those little bugs.

Separating or isolating the infected plant from others. I moved the infected plant, but in an area 20 by 6 feet, there just isn't much room to isolate. Quarantine works better in hospitals than it does in real life.

Update:  The Ivory spray and the misting several times a day seems to have banished the spider mites to someone else's yard. The tomatoes are looking good with new blossoms. It doesn't appear as if the mites had spread to any of the other plants in the area.

All in a gardener's day,