Damn, several awesome tips there thanks a ton. Im paranoid about mites so should I ever suspect any I will try a combo of UV light and "using my brain" and tricking them into offing themselves.
Im planning on moving my grow into the garage after this run, so would you recommend I clean all the surfaces of the garage with orange oil and let it sit for a few weeks to make sure no mites are there? Also, do mites hang around if there is no plant material to eat?
I have some Nukem spray that I was gonna use to clean the garage with. I was thinking maybe use the nukem on all surfaces, let it dry couple days, then hit it with the orange oil. I take it the plants dont mind the orange oil?
Hells yeah bro thanks again for the advice.
Orange oil can burn up a plant pretty bad if the concentration is too high so I'd keep it off the leaves.
1oz orange oil to 30oz of water would make for a good spray to use on a soil surface say if you have gnats or springtails.
I also use it to kill fire ants but that's another story.
I like to use a pump sprayer which holds about 2 gallons of water and mix in 4oz of orange oil or same ratio in a small spray bottle and just go around spraying everything like spraying a window with windex.
In some areas like the floor, I let it dry. But for something like my reflective walls I spray them and wipe down so there's no residue. And I'll use it to clean fan blades and any other place that might get dusty.
In a garage, yeah I'd probably fumigate too then clean.
Spider mites are a peculiar bug. Outside they have so many predators they're kept in check fairly well by other bugs that eat them but indoors they become an apex pest with no natural predator.
They only want live plants. They won't nest up someplace waiting for a plant to come to them and they want nothing to do with drying plant material.
They'll go find the next plant within hours of the host plant's death. Indoors they simply crawl to the next plant, feast, and lay more eggs on the underside of leaves.
When they go mobile they gather in a cluster of webbing like a spider web, get to a high point, let go of the plant, and use wind to blow them to the next living plant. When you see the webbing, that means they're close to killing the plant and getting ready to leave it. Webs also indicates a severe infestation.
So after a grow when plants are dead and there's no wind or anyplace to go, they die within days if not hours. They need to constantly be sucking on plants to stay hydrated and well fed. Take that away and lock them in a room they subside and die off like all living things would do.
I'm not sure about eggs and if they can go dormant then pop open later but that's just another reason to keep things clean and dust often. Eggs will always be on leaves but in the mayhem of chopping and moving plants around I'm sure some can fall off and end up in the environment. But sya they hatch in a dust pile they'd die fairly quick not having any plants to suck on
Every pause in the grow, every cleaning, is going to help break their cycle and kill them off