I discovered spider mites last season late July, a few weeks before the start of harvest. At the time the plants were big and the mites were impossible to eliminate. My only hope was to slow them down so that new growth outpaced my pruning tick infested branches. By that time it was too late for anti mite oil to work because there were too many of them. Hard water showers every day helped slow them down a lot. This meant spraying the hose directly at the plants at full blast. At this point in the season when the tomatoes are little the anti mite oils might work. I got these mites on my eggplants and cucumbers as well but the tomato plants suffered the most. It was finding them on eggplants last season that led to my discovery of them killing my tomatoes. Here is a link that might be useful: Link to my log entry on mites written last July

Several things can cause tight centers. Too much light, too much fertilizer, too cool temperatures. Try moving plants to edge of shelves if grown under lights or reduce time if many are involved. If you are using 1/4 tsp fertilizer to gallon of water, reduce to 1/8 tsp. Use clear water a couple of times. For fertilizer burn(the leaf centers can be fuzzy looking) flush soil with large amounts of water to remove fertilizer salts. If you don't fertilize each time you water, this wouldn't be your problem. A lot of times just correcting the ph may help. If your plants haven't been repotted for some time, the fresh potting mix would help with ph. As for cool temps, next summmer may help!!! Seriously, if growing under lights, keep off in daytime and turn on at night, particularly if you turn down your heat at night. It bothers me Winnie mentioned tiny centers and off color leaves. If some of the other leaf edges are turning under, this could indicate broad mites. You don't want to jump to the conclusion that you do have mites, but keep this in mind. With cyclamen mites the leaf centers are hairy, fuzzy and flower buds may not open or can be deformed. A good miticide has to be used in order to control the infestation of both kinds of mites. Others may have more suggestions. Elaine

1. Yes, the leaves are hairier than normal. 2. The stems are disproportiately larger than the leaves. But then, the leaves are tiny--dime sized at best. 3. The center leaves are still green, but extremely tiny--in the time I've had the plant it has barely grown at all. I use fish emulsion as fertilizer and keep the temps around 70 degrees. The plant is in an east facing window with blinds. Could this be a root problem? When I obtained the plant, it was in a heavy soil, and a lot of the roots were black. After removing the dead roots, I repotted it into a smaller pot using 50% African violet soil and 50% perlite. I have not checked the roots since, not wanting to disturb the plant. I will see about the botanical garden option. Thanks for the suggestions, Nancy.

Thank you, thank you -- all of you. I am going to try to post some pics I took today. I am hoping they will be more revealing. Sorry that last one is so blurry. Berndoodles, thanks for the pics of leaf hopper damage. I think I certainly have that, don't you (referring to the pic with the lovely bugs)? I also found some webbing, so I think maybe I have spider mites. Oh, joy! And I also think I have powdery mildew. I would love anyone's advice. I sure wish I had a flatbed scanner. My daughter has one, but she is out of town. And I wouldn't mind if we had a Bug Man out here in Colorado. However, I took samples to my local nursery and the very nice rose lady there confirmed that I have several separate problems. She thought that the drooping rosebuds were caused by thrips and told me to go home and cut all of those drooping buds off and dispose of them. She thought I had powdery mildew, too, and also spider mites. She advised that I use Bayer All-in-One spray, so I bought that, but after reading the instructions, I decided to try Neem Oil because the instructions said not to use when bees are active, and they are very active on Ballerina, at least during the day, but maybe I could use it at night. I sprayed yesterday very thoroughly with Neem oil and will repeat in 7 days. However, since my roses are so badly infected, and with multiple buggies or whatever, maybe I will have to go toxic. Another problem with me using a toxic spray is I have large pots of herbs close to Ballerina, in fact right beside it. I think I could cover the pots with black trash bags or something. But I also have black raspberries whose vines are kind of intermingled with one of my New Dawn climbers. I'm not sure if I can cover all of them enough. Maybe if I used a hand sprayer rather than a hose-end sprayer it would be easier. So what do you think? Thanks again. Marlene