Carla: Yes, spider mites like apple and plum. In my greenhouse they like plums and pluots more than any other fruit. Also have had them on peach and citrus. Less so on apricot and cherry. None so far on grapes. I haven't tried the beneficals but the new miticides are very effective. As mentioned above, you can see the mites with a small hand lens. I usually spot them by the bronzing that appears on the upper leaf surface. The Fruitnut

A new garden bed can be the reason since the Soil Food Web haas not yet developed enough to be of much help. If a soil was greatly lacking in sufficient amounts of organic matter, needed to support that Soil Food Web, it can take 3 plus years for the SFW to get large enough to be beneficial. Although your University of California Cooperative Extension Service does not do soil testing they can help you find labs that will so you can find out what your soils pH and the balance between the macro nutrients is and these simple soil tests may also be of some use. 1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. 2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up. 3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart. 4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell. 5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

Just as an idea starter: this car wash thing, or something with its three main features of dispenser, aim-able nozzle, and hose connection, could work very well and also do extra duty as a car wash wand, a dog washer, a window rinser, and daughter's unsavory boyfriend repeller. Put a detergent-soaked wad of cheesecloth in the cup, extend the tube, aim the nozzle up, and just stand up straight and walk past the plants, spraying firmly (but without violence) underneath everything.PS: if you don't want heavily loaded household detergents on your plants, try TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) if you can find it in a pure formulation. It works in extremely tiny amounts as the necessary wetting agent.

Mary, Since I don't grow azaleas in our highly alkaline soil/water, I have no experience treating them for spider mites. Most of the standard organic treatments are sprays (neem oil, insecticidal soap, etc.) that shouldn't be used above 90 degrees on most plants. Since azaleas have a waxier leaf than tender plants like tomato plants, they might be less prone to damage if sprayed at high temperatures, but I personally still wouldn't use these products on them in the middle of summer. You might Google and read about the lightweight horticultural oils that are super-refined versions of dormant oil. The summerweight oils were developed to be used in summer, but I don't use them so I don't know if they are okay to use above 90 degrees. There's summer, and then there's SUMMER and right now we are having SUMMER so I wouldn't spray much of anything on plants now. It just makes the heat fry the leaves. But, if you can find documentation that explicitly states the summerweight oils can be used on azaleas in high temperatures, that might be your best option for the azaleas. A super-strong spray of water often knocks them off the undersides of the leaves, though you have to do it repeatedly. Since azaleas are not edible plants, you also could use one of the systemic products used to control spider mites on ornamental plants only. The advantage of using a systemic on ornamentals is that it goes into the plant and becomes a part of it and stays there so it has a long-lasting effect. The disadvantage is that systemics contain highly toxic poisons. If you want to use one on your azaleas, look at the products on store shelves labeled for insect control on Roses and Flowers, and specifically read label to see if the label says they control spider mites. I don't use systemics so have no idea how effective they are or if they can be used at any high temperatures, but a product label should contain that info. It is hard to find good information on what to spray in extreme summer heat, so I often search for info from Clemson University or Texas A&M University since they have great online info and climates similar to ours. (Sadly, while OSU has some great fact sheets, they don't have nearly as much online info as the two universities I named above, or it is harder to find, or something.) Here's a great document on pest control on azaleas from Clemson: Pest Control on Azaleas Hazel, They likely disappeared because beneficial insects are eating them. That is how "the system" is supposed to work, and actually does work in many cases. especially in organic or mostly organic gardens where the gardeners are not spraying broad-spectrum pesticides that kill off the beneficial insects. It is why I just ignore spider mites and most other pests in the summer. Eventually the beneficial insect population catches up with them and takes care of them. The pests that we have a harder time controlling in summer are the really big things like blister beetles and grasshoppers because we don't have many (if any) beneficial insects that feed on those. Remember that in an average garden only about 3% of the insects are pests that harm our plants, so we if leave the garden alone to function as naturally as possible, the rest of the insects are either not harmful or they are beneficials that are killing the harmful insects. When we use non-toxic control methods like hand-picking and destroying pests like Colorado potato beetles and harlequin bugs, we are leaving the beneficials alone and in good health so their population can grow and take care of the little things like aphids, spider mites, white flies, etc. Our pest populations for the most part peak in July and sometimes August but then begin to fall, so usually by the time it seems like the plants cannot tolerate one more spider mite or white fly, for example, then those pest populations are at the peak and are about to start falling. I noticed spider mite damage lessening on tomato plants about 2 weeks ago. The peak was early in our garden this year, but the pests were early to arrive in spring, so maybe an early peak is not surprising. Lady bugs disappear because they run out of food. I haven't seen very many lady bugs at all in the last 2 or 3 weeks. They move on in the search for food once they've eaten up all the pest insects they like in your garden. Sometimes you may see a few active very, very early in the day or very late, but often at this time of the year they leave gardens to go feed on plants in stressed areas---like drought-stressed fields where the stressed plants are more attractive to pests than healthier irrigated plants in a garden would be. I know that I have seen lady bugs on pigweed plants in the pasture lately, so they're probably feeding on spider mites and other pests on the pigweed. Bon, I had spider mites hit the bush beans very hard in May but by the time the plants were in truly rough shape, the bush beans were at the end of their normal productive period anyway. After I pulled out the bush beans, I figured the spider mites would move on right away to the young pole beans but they didn't. I assume it is because the pole beans were younger and had so much vigor that they weren't as attractive to the spider mites. Instead, the spider mites seemed to focus on tomato plants carrying heavy loads of fruit, which is typical, because a plant with a heavy load of fruit is very stressed just trying to enlarge/mature the fruit. My bean plants look pretty enough and healthy enough that you'd think it was April instead of late July. The few bean plants where spider mites have shown up only have light damage to a few leaves, and they are the bean plants closest to tomato plants. This year I alternated raised beds of tomato plants with raised beds of beans, southern peas, cucumbers, muskmelons, etc. growing on trellises. All the beds run east-west so the shade from each trellis isn't heavy enough (mostly it falls into the pathways) to shade plants in the bed that sits just north of the trellised bed. Here is where it gets interesting. The tomato plants with major spider mite infestations were on the east side of the garden (no trellised beds in the row of small beds at the east end of the garden) and on the south side of the garden, nearest the neighbor's fields. They had no tall, trellised plants to block the spider mites and protect them. The southernmost rows of plants always get spider mites first. However, each row of tomato plants that had a trellised bed on either side of it did not have many spider mites at all. So, I'm thinking the trellised beds, once the plants on the trellises were tall enough, served as a sort of blocking mechanism to keep the spider mites from blowing from one row of tomato plants to another. I find this observation really interesting and wonder if alternating raised beds of tomato plants with raised beds of trellised plants would work every year to slow the spread of spider mites. I think next year I am going to plant pole beans along the south and garden fence lines to see if they protect the tomato plants in those areas. I'd love to be able to take credit for coming up with a brilliant way to slow down the movement of spider mites from one row to the next since we know they travel on the wind, but it was accidental. I simply decided to use more trellises in the front garden because I didn't want to put all my trellised plants in the back garden with the voles. I knew I couldn't have too many trellises too close to one another or the plants in different beds likely would shade each other, so I put a trellis up in every other bed, hoping that since the tomato plants would get taller earlier, they'd be too tall to be shaded out by trellised plants that weren't planted terribly early. It worked. Most of the tomato plants were 2-3' tall by the time I planted the beans, cukes, southern peas, etc. in adjacent beds so that by the time the beans were getting really tall on the trellises, the tomatoes were already 6' tall or taller and weren't bothered by any shade from the trellises that might shade them for a small portion of the day. And, even if there are very small numbers of spider mites on the lima bean plants now, they aren't doing much damage. Another couple of weeks of harvesting southern peas and lima beans and I'll have all I want of both those crops in the freezer and I'll take out those plants to make way for more fall plantings. I'd rather keep all the trellised plants on the garden's perimeter fencelines, but deer and rabbits can eat the parts of the plants that stick out on the outside portion of the fence, so using more internal trellises this year killed two birds with one stone---protecting plants from being nibbled by wildlife and appearing to slow down the spider mites. No matter how long a person has gardened, it's always good to shake up the way you do things because doing things in new ways often brings delightful surprises like this one. There is no comparison at all between the tomato plants in southernmost and easternmost parts of the garden and those in the more protected interior regions in terms of spider mites, and that observation this year has provided lots of food for thought. Dawn