Oh my, a whopping case of spider mites. If plant is a reasonable size, might be easiest to trash entire plant but first enclose in a bag.

Plants are good size producing lots of tomatoes. What's good to Get rid of them? Thanks

Get rid of them? LOL. Maybe co-exist with them...
Cut off the most infested leaves and incinerate them with the unwelcome parasite dastardly things still on them (leaves which are already discolored and damaged beyond repair). Blast them with water from underneath without ripping your leaves but with a good wand. Neem oil can control them, so blast them with it - the higher refined the oil the more effective - there are different grades of Neem. Highly refined horticultural oil also works (not regular dormant oil). I've used this. But if you snooze you loose so best to move quickly. Spray early in the am ... and let us know how it goes!

PC

thank you...I will try it. My first time growing tomatoes. I never have probs with other vegetables I grow.

Good luck, Mullings: Here's a video:

I just Googled it and that cracked me up. He is using pyrethin and some
spreader sticker first instead of Neem. I'm doubtful about how
effective pyrethrin is, someone else here might
have some real experience with it.
The root stuff he uses at the end seems unnecessary and wasteful to me.
But I like this guy's style, especially when he tells the bugs to
"Die!, Die!" I would try to do as he sprays but focus more on the
undersides, every 5 days for about three weeks, to try to get all the
generations for starters. There is a high end Neem based product called Azamax on Amazon, 4 oz makes 4 gallons for $20, so a little steep.

The most expensive and best solution is to buy 'predatory mites', the
'good' mites. They eat the 'bad' mites and are considered the only
effective control for mites in greenhouses and there is a big business
selling them. They are costly and once they eat all the mites and other
pests they eat, they can disappear and it is possible that the spider
mites can come back.

PS Here is a link I found on the internet that you can supposedly buy 100 of a three species predatory mite mix for just $12 plus shipping but I'm thinking shipping is costly. You probably need 1000 or more of these according to the seller's website, but I bet if you sprayed plain water first and then used these, they would catch up soon enough. Of course if you use this biological control you wouldn't use Neem or any other miticide since it would kill the good guys too. I can't vouch for this I just Googled it wondering why there wasn't anyone raising mites and making a good business and I found this. You have to call them to order according to the web page and I guess that's when they tell you how much shipping costs.

PC

Main thing is to first get as many of them off the plant as possible by removing leaves and all, whole branches if necessary. Only after doing that first then spray for the remaining ones. If you spray first you only spread them. And the whole plant is heavily infested bag and burn the entire plant.

Dave

Totally agree w/ Dave. I was going to say the same. Should not blast/diturb them as PC has suggested. get a plastic bag and collect as many of those pests as you possibly can. I would even use a "Dust Buster" vacuum to suck them into vacuum bag.
Those bugs need a long time to reproduce. So minimizing their number should be a good short term solution. .

Sey

Whichever way you are going to take care of that problem, healthy plants do not attract pests in those numbers... something is off balance in your garden.

Lol, like Sey's idea of the dust buster, but be prepared for neighbors thinking you're nuts. I know this from experience since I shop vac my front yard every year.

"Should not blast/diturb them as PC has suggested. get a plastic bag and
collect as many of those pests as you possibly can. I would even use a
"Dust Buster" vacuum to suck them into vacuum bag."

Sey, what are you talking about and where has digdirt disagreed with me? Please read my comments before misinterpreting them. Quoting myself:
"Cut off the most infested leaves and incinerate them with the unwelcome
parasite dastardly things still on them (leaves which are already
discolored and damaged beyond repair). Blast them with water from
underneath without ripping your leaves but with a good wand. Neem oil "

The reality of this situation is there are some visible colonies that can be collected and destroyed as I posted but you did not read sufficiently. I suggested the most effective 1-2 punch for an immediate effect.

However there is a trade off. These plants are productive according to the OP and foliage needs to be saved. Yeah you could vacuum them up if you want to. digdirt, is very concerned about "spreading them around" LOL! I'm not, they already are spread around by the wind anyway. I just remove the obvious and go from there. Hopefully they haven't destroyed every single leaf and be in the numbers of the original photo on each and every leaf, though the OP is not clear on that point, I did not get the impression from their post this was the case.

Regarding pressure blasting - the vast majority that are knocked off the plant will not survive let alone walk all the way back up the plant and will die either from the pressure of the water or from starvation. Dead or alive they are principally scavenged and eaten by ants here once they are knocked off. These arachnids' bodies are very tender and easily are crushed and in my estimation once they have been dislodged are mostly goners even if not crushed. They are not like microbes propagating by spores that reinfect in hours. Their life cycle is about a week or two and 4 water treatments at five day intervals is very effective to decimate them taking this into consideration.

"Blasting" the way the guy in the video uses his wand, but from the underside is the most important single factor as many will be killed, especially if neem oil is used in the process, they have little chance of recovering to the plague level they are in now. Vacuuming can help cut the infestation pressure down, but does not provide the violence necessary to crush the critters it misses so I personally wouldn't do it. But if you really had time to do everything you could in the most thought out process, you could remove the heavily infected colonies and heavily damaged foliage that's no longer good, manually as I suggested, kill some more with your fingers removing web use a vacuum if you choose then too, but don't forget to definitely blast them with water/Neem at the end.

My experience with these has been on strawberries where they are extremely destructive and I deal with them all the time. I have never had such an outbreak on my tomatoes and it looks like a nightmare from the one single picture, but if I wanted to recover the plants I would first make sure the plants are not too far gone, and then do as I said. As lindalana said something may be out of whack and it is actually obvious what that is. The OP sprayed with insecticide to control these and killed all the creatures that eat them, so now they are out of control. I've been through that too. The single most important thing is quick action as this is an incredibly heavy drain on the plant by the hour. Blast away :-)
PC

Every year there is some type of huge infestation by something. Doesn't necessarily some thing is off balance. Pests are everywhere. Especially when most ppl don't Garden if u do have the only garden it is the only place for pest to infest. What else does a tomato horn worm eat? A cabbage looper? A swd fly? A squash vine borer? To my knowledge these things don't eat grass.

Chigardenlady, I am in the camp of believers that healthy plants are not recognized/ attracted by pests/insects. I.e. there is always some bad and good guys out there and sometimes you do get a damage but in a healthy system that damage is minimal, because there is balance in soil and in plants. It is when one uses insecticides/fungicides/ pesticides that one destroys balance of good and bad... I like biological control or planting beneficial plants ...soil food web

"Every year there is some type of huge infestation by something. Doesn't
necessarily some thing is off balance. Pests are everywhere. Especially
when most ppl don't Garden if u do have"

Chigardenlady, My original point was there is a cause & effect relationship between the use of the garden pesticide and the expansion of the mite population frustrating the OP. I disagree that infestations are caused by pests 'everywhere' being forced into dwindling gardens, but agree with you that nature can be chaotic sometimes.
PC

So you are telling me in il you never have any pests? Yeah rite. I see huge swarms of all kinds of things and I know it goes on everywhere, not necessarily just in gardens. A house can be infested with insects too. The woods are infested with ticks right now. We had so much rain that everywhere there are swarms of mosquitoes. That is just nature and I agree use of chemicals and pollution definitely ruins a balance and so does monocropping. Also the decrease in natural predators. I was saying before of course if you grow something that has a particular type of pest they will find their way to your Garden. Where I live I know of three gardens in this neighborhood mine my father's and an old man. I walk my dog and I see no gardens. This is where I live. And I am an organic gardener and my soil is great now after years of amending and composting. Does that mean my garden is invisible to pests and there are never any plant diseases? I wish. Because you have healthy soil Doesn't mean you can control nature.

Lol Sey!!!

<Whichever way you are going to take care of that problem, healthy plants do not attract pests in those numbers... something is off balance in your garden.>

In a perfect world maybe but we don't live there. And you have said you garden in a community garden plot Linda so I doubt it is a perfect world either. Indeed very likely more problem ridden than non-community gardens are. But then Dr. Ingham has never made many of the grand claims attributed to her research in Oregon that some are determined to read into it.

IMO the only issue here is that a problem that severe (as in the pics) could have been and should have been identified much earlier and dealt with long before it became so severe. Given the life cycle of spider mites it sure didn't develop over night or even over a week.

And no, I didn't disagree with PC at all. Just stressed the point that that the majority need to be removed by hand first so they don't just get spread all over by hose washing or other spraying.

Dave

A big infestation of spider mites could happen if a broad spectrum insecticide like Sevin was sprayed earlier and eliminated the beneficial insects. Sometimes the bad bugs bounce back faster than the good bugs.

Seysonn, just as immuno suppressed people will be most susceptible to lets say flu, plants that are grown not in optimum condition, i.e. poor soil practices will get sick earlier and more severe. As it happens pest and insects are going to "yummy" first on stressed plants... and possibly not even notice healthy crops...

If the lawn full of "weeds" those weeds have function- they are mining minerals out of the soil because lawn is lacking and needs " support"

Chigardenlady, Nature controls by the way of diversity and it is humans who due to lack of knowledge divide soil biology on good and bad guys... they all serve some function. Healthy biology will contain loops of things that eat, multiple, get eaten themselves, serve as food etc. Does my garden have mites? Sure... but the damage is minimal... it is rainy season, does it have slugs? Loads... but look at my hostas

Research suggests that heavy infestation with ticks is due to our poor agricultural practices... unfortunately. Spraying fungicides/insecticides/ pesticides indiscriminately destroys far more than bad guys... and yes, it is totally possibly to live without it. Take Netherlands- you would not be able to buy fungicide in the store there- it is forbidden to use... nevermind organic or not...

Dave, my biggest problem with community gardens is village tilling practices and need to return plot for the winter, i.e. not being able to cover crop, I have to start every year with destroyed biology to my soil. Minus that I believe it would have been totally possible to create an area where "bad guys" would not feel living comfy. Here is some interesting article Grasshopers

Yes, immune system is applicable to bacterial diseases resistance (as in some hybrids), not pests. So I don't think that a healthy plant (as you described) can repel pests. I could be wrong !

Sey

Seysonn, very good question! Not sure if this will answer it fully but it has to do something with food plant produce to repel or attract so to speak pests. I have found comments under article just as valuable as article itself.Plant sickness