Most insecticides that are not dedicated "miticides" only "control" spidermites, they don't eliminate them. There is a miticide available to the home gardener, its called KELTHANE. It does work, I use it, BUT....it doesn't eradicate mites like you would think it should. They will pop back out if you aren't looking, usually somewhere else on some other plant than the one you treated. I use a double-pronged technique in my greenhouse that seems to work well (and I have well over 75 plants, LOL, more like over 1500 plants). I spray infestations with Kelthane, ONCE, when I first notice them, and I spray not just the infested plant, but everything within a 2 ft radius. This is for quick knockdown. Then, a day or 2 later, I re-spray that same area and a little further out (maybe a 3-4 ft radius) with Neem Oil. This works very well for me personally. The only way to really eradicate mites, I have been told by others, is to invest in the predator mites, but that's more involved and expensive

Yeah, that's what I thought, but that option only appears in the dialogue boxes on replies; it's not available in the original post that starts a thread (I can edit this post, but not the 1st one). Go figure. I should probably mention that in the thread someone had started about things we'd like to see changed in the Houzz forum. For anyone curious about spider mite lifecycle and what to do or NOT do to eradicate them, here are a couple of good sources: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7405.html http://www.magicactus.com/red_spider.html

Oh whew...I am so relieved to read that nobody thinks they are spider mite webs. Whew, whew!! Is there some definitive way to determine mite webs vs spider webs? Thanks TJ. You are right. And I haven't sprayed a thing, good or bad, in the last 15 years with the mentality of "come what may" but this yard has been trying. I have never seen so many good and bad bugs in my life...and in the last month resorted to BT to kill the hornworms that are decimating my tomatoes and since I'm spraying anyway, I bought the neem which I'd read up on here. It appeared to be pretty innocuous overall, so that I used along one fence where most of my succulents live in light shade and dappled sun--that's the area where both of these photos were taken. None of it was sprayed on my edible or flowering plants, as I read that neem can damage blossoms... The only thing I have consistently used except when I lived in SF was snail bait and they seem to be having quite the blast anyway this year. Jean, we sure do! I can't confirm my neighbor ID'd what she saw correctly but upon hearing that and about two minutes before I ordered neem, lol, I did google it and Japanese Beetles were spotted in the Sacramento area, right above me, per the CA Dept of Ag. I only read one article but that was close enough for me! Ken, my spiders are year round, I'm afraid. January has much less than the other months but there is no month where I can't find spiders crawling on my plants or webbing here and there. Come spring, there's virtually no plant I can't find a spider on or at least evidence of some spider having been on it. That said, I still find it really bizarre that at this yard, for the first time ever in my gardening life, I have not seen ONE aphid. Spiders are not predators of aphids, are they? I've never seen a ladybug here either..probably because there are no aphids. Not complaining but I find it so bizarre! Thanks again, folks!

I took a day-long seminar on greenhouse management at the local botanical gardens. They have an acre under glass.... The take-away was their go-to "solution" for soft-bodied insects like aphids, mites - and even scale at the 'crawler' stage. Isopropyl alcohol and Dawn. Can't get cheaper than that and it works surprisingly well. For a 1 qt. sprayer, their recipe was a capful of 91% isopropnol and a couple of drops of Dawn. Swirl to mix: you don't want suds. I've even amped up the concentration slightly with no deleterious effects - except on the 'wildlife'.... Cheers