Neem Oil is not meant for Black Flies...Does it say so on the bottle?

That stuff is for sucking pests..The best way to rid back flies is to cut back on watering, use a porous mix or some other liquid that will soak the mix and smother the eggs.

Sounds like kmadsen has fungus gnats which are very common.

Couldn't agree more Mike, after spraying my trees with my recent strong mix of horticultural oil and fish emulsion (I also made sure to really saturate the 511 mix too) my fungus gnat issue seems to be gone. It has been about 4 days since the treatment so we will see what happens after the mix dries a bit more. I plan to keep up the treatments.

Hi Laura, I used my regular meyer lemon curd recipe

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=food%20in%20jars%20meyer%20lemon%20curd

and then baked it in a homemade pastry pie shell. I think the baking is what firms up the curd a bit more. I may have overdone it though as I found mine to be overbaked a bit and perhaps too dry. I prefer the curd in bars! Maybe a graham cracker crust would have been better too.

Thanks Hobby! Kmadsen, sorry to have missed your questions...thank you Figs and Mike for answering them. For the fungus gnats you may also want to try diatomaceous earth. Some on this forum have used it, although I've not tried it myself. I now wonder if my "spider mites" were actually tiny spiders like Mike suggested. Everything looks good with the trees so far...except for the budgies that have gnawed one of Alexander's new branches...argh!

Hobby Nice trees

Just catching up and I see you like potted trees in specialty design pots that come with their own handles. I use the same type of pots. My pots are mostly white and of 5 gallon size. I have 6 handled pots of 7 gallons and 1 of 4 gallons and 1 of 3. The pots of 2 gallons or smaller I drill a hole in its side that snugly fits my vacuum cleaner's hose to suck air through my tree's roots.

There is a metal steak that holds the tree vertical so that the bucket lights fits evenly over the foliage.

6b Steve

I've managed to kill all my spider mites with cinnamon and rosemary, along with a few other herbs.

Did you boil water with cinnamon and rosemary? then cool and water that way or spray on? I will tell you that i think the black flies have at least doubled since yesterday. I read on another post to put down sand and aquarium rock so the eggs can't hatch.

Sand and rocks will make it worst..That's an old wives tail..You only allow the top to dry out more slowly and incubate what is lying underneath the top layer..

Get those yellow sticky traps, water with Hydrogen Peroxide and soapy water.....Or you could use those mosquito dunks found every where...The best defense is a good porous mix and allowing the mix to dry out almost to the bottom frequently...

I actually add lemon wedges, a cinnamon stick, oregano, marjoram (optional), Rosemary, cloves, nutmeg, and a bit of rubbing alchohol into boiling hot water. Then I let it steep for 5 hours.

Thanks Season55 I will give it a try.

I just came across this spider mite thread and wanted to make a few observations.

First, you have to see the spider mites before you can say you have them (although the damage they do can be pretty obvious). There are two methods I've used: the best is a handheld illuminated microscope, you can see the adult spider mites, the young ones, the eggs, and the dead ones if you're successful. This is the one I use : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002E0MU70/ref=ox_sc_mini_detail?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER      . I've had three or four of these and they are from China and vary between $3 and $8, usually for the exact same item. They are advertised as 45x or 60x but this current link shows a more accurate power of 16x. The have bright LED lights, they last a long time although sometimes the battery plug will come a little loose and the lights get erratic.

The quick way to check for spider mites is to take a clean white sheet of paper, fold it for stability, and hold it under some suspect leaves. When you tap down on the top of the leaves some spider mites will fall onto the white paper and show up as small black specks that sometimes move around. If you run your finger over one and squish it, you'll get a red streak of blood.

About Neem oil...I've read that once mixed it's only good for 6 hours. Then it looses it's potency. Is this correct?

Also, I'm curious to know why container citrus is taken indoors when the temperatures are still above 40F. I have a lot of container citrus that I leave outside all winter long and even here in S. Calif (up in a canyon) I get down to 26-28F two or three times each winter, and plenty of nights at 30F. I've yet to see any frost damage to my citrus, including to some lime trees that are supposed to be very sensitive.

John

Hi John...The method of bringing the pots in is all relative...It depends how long the temps stay that cold and how often...Up here, I see damage as soon as three days out with temps consistently below 50...We get long hours of those temps and very little warm mornings or very long cold days...This is why it will cause issues with my trees and eventually kill them...If I lived in your area, I too would leave mine out and not worry as much since your mornings warm up quite quickly, your days warm up in between and your sun is much stronger than mines..Can we switch places?

Spider mites don't always show up on white paper. Sometime they will show up on black paper too since the mites I have to deal with if I ever get them and the ones in the past have always been white barely crawling spots, less than the size of a grain of the smallest sand on earth. You would have to use a magnifying glass and stare at the same spot on the under side of a leaf with good light for at least a couple of minutes to watch for movement.....If one lets their situation get bad enough, they will get webs and can see those white suckers crawling in them with the sun directly hitting the web..You gave some good suggestions for the kind of mites you get in your area and thank you for stopping by.

Please, stick around...It's very nice here!

Have a good day

Mike

John My plants are outside and should do well down to 20+ degrees F. I have a plants in aggressive growth that I bring inside overnight and set outside when the temperatures are up in the day for some sunlight. I agree with you on leaving the trees out as long as I can. Spidermites; I use 4 tablespoons of Canola oil with 1 table spoon of dish soap to a gallon of water. They are always in the kitchen and easy to find. I spray before the trees com inside whether I have a problem or not. Safety first. The nice thing about oil and soap I can shake the predictors of my trees then spray and the concoction won't hurt them when the jump back on the trees

Thanks for the ideas John. I have a big magnifying glass that I can use. Mike pretty much explained why our trees come indoors. The cold temps are not limited to a few hours at night here...and they don't always warm up much during the day. Your weather and mine are quite different. I have noticed that since bringing them indoors, my trees are happier and have started growing again, which they were not doing when outdoors.

I feel for you Laura... my Meyer lemon is being attacked by spider mites as well - thankfully the only one. It doesn't seem to like my other citrus/plants. Hopefully yours is under control. On the other hand...my page orange has 2/3 of its leaves and my satsuma's leaves are shriving up brown about one a day... I am just awful at growing citrus indoors. very frustrating. I keep coming back to citrus though - my biochemist spirit will never give up on growing them!!!

Since your citrus look very healthy and are actively growing, I have good hopes that you'll have your mite problem under control!

jbclem -- I hadn't heard about the neem oil only effective up to 6 hours after mixing. That would explain why it isn't working at all. I will try a fresh batch.

season55 -- I am mixing up a batch of your spray now.

everyone- I appreciate all the comments. My daughter gave me the Meyer lemon tree for Christmas last year and I so want to be successful at growing these little gems.

Mike, the devil is in those temperature details, isn't it. I remember long cold winter days in Iowa where when it got up to 32F, on a sunny day we would run around outside in t-shirts trying to get a suntan. But we always ended up indoors, just like your citrus. Does your indoor citrus flush in the winter? The weather here doesn't seem to stop the regular citrus flushing schedule. I suppose the 80f+ warm snaps we get in Nov, Dec, and Jan balance out the cold nights; in fact I've read that citrus need some cold nights to grow and develop properly. That works out well here in this canyon where once fall/winter starts most nights are in the 30's and 40's.

Here's a spider mite page from the U of Calif. I have the two spotted mites on my vegetable plants, they don't make webbing there. I haven't noticed any webbing on my citrus so I haven't gone looking for spider mites there very much. And I've never seen stippled citrus leaves...and I've very very familiar with that on certain vegetable types. They may seem stationary with a magnifying glass(usually 4x maximum) but with the little device I use you can see (and count) their legs waving around, something they do all the time.

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/C107/m107bpmites.html

One thing I just learned from this UC page was the difference between a spider mite egg (round) and a spider mite predator egg (oblong)...I'll be looking for that since I can easily see the eggs. Also, I have read that neem oil will kill spider mite eggs, and if that's true than it'll make it a lot easier to control them. Otherwise you have to keep going back, with the Safer Soap, every week...and that's where I usually fail.

Do any of you have to deal with Citrus Leaf Miner (CLM)? I can't tell where most of you are living, but does a really cold winter preclude this pest? Out here they usually start up in late spring, although it varies from year to year...and I just found some CLM larva (with the help of my little magnifying microscope) at the end of their mines/tunnels. They can really make a young citrus look unattractive, and stunt the tree's growth if there are enough of them. And very hard to control organically.

John

Wow, neem oil emulsion is only good for 6 hours! ????? I would like to see some evidence.

It's pretty typical that cold pressed oils lose potency VERY rapidly- not just neem. They start oxidizing as soon as they are out of the bottle.

Hobby, I have searched and I have seen no scientific articles to support this claim. Some Internet articles say you should use it within 4 hours.

However, when I use neem oil emulsion I prepare it fresh, do not store it but use it all or discard it all because I do not know when I will be using it again and in the mean time it may degrade and microbes may grow in it.

I don't store mine either once mixed.

Hey guys.

This will help quite a bit. All about Neem Oil..

http://www.discoverneem.com/neem-insect-spray.html

Darnit and here I thought I may be able to slip one tiny anecdotal comment by Vlad for once! lol Just joking.

I guess I am extending my understanding of the volatility of essential oils to neem as well without having actually read something definitive regarding neem specifically. That being said, I still think the logic makes sense- super delicate, potent chemical extractions of oils, plants etc are degraded when exposed to air, heat or light (or a combination of) and lose efficacy in a relatively short period of time and I think neem would fall into a very similar class to cold pressed essential oils...

Here is the first legit looking article I found:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1541-4337.12006/full

It looked a bit dry to me but I skimmed it and the relevant points seem to be there ;). lol

Does hard frost kill spider mites. If so I can leave my trees outside when it drops to 24F and take them in the next day.

6b Steve

I'm afraid not Steve..All they will do is go dormant until the next warm up...Arg, right?

Hobby, you made me laugh! Thanks for that article. I know that oils degrade with time. I just doubt that any significant amount of degradation can occur under normal storage conditions in a time span measured in hours as opposed to days or weeks. But I have no evidence to back that up, so the safe thing to do is make it up fresh each time.

Oh good I was being totally tongue in cheek lol. I also mix fresh every time anyway but it could be a fun experiment to figure it out... now who has access to a lab? We have greenhouses, we have grow rooms, we have 1 tiki lounge, now we just need access to a proper facility!

I emailed Dyna-Gro about the life of the pure Neem oil (before mixing). Their answer: Our
Neem Oil Leaf Polish can be used for up to 2 years after the date associated
with the lot#. You can find the lot# printed on the back of the bottle.

I tried the cinnamon stick/lemonwedge/spices concoction and it didn't work. the flies keep multiplying. My husband isn't excited about the fish emulsion (since my tree is indoors. I bought some diatomaceous earth. Do I put a layer on top of my soil of this??.. or mix it in to the soil?... I will eventually transplant and make it so I can water from the bottom not on the surface. My lemons are literally turning yellow now so I am afraid of transplanting during the productive season. 511 is ordered and on its way to my house.

Thanks for the tip that the rocks make it worse I will be removing them at the time I add the DE.

I would sprinkle a thin layer on the mix. Let us know it it works!

Wow! Lots of work dealing with spider mites. I have heard of them but that's one of a very few pests I haven't had to deal with. Not sure if it's my high humidity, being lucky, or maybe the whiteflies ate them (LOL!).

Lol John!! I don't think they are much of a problem for outdoor trees - lucky you!

Oh my God, Laura, you are wrong about that! You should see what my friends in California have to deal with when it comes to mites..They are more veracious than ours and they have several kinds to boot! Then they have the drought and can't even squirt them off with water when under a drought...You don't want to get them there....lol

John, I didn't think Texas got that humid..You must live on the Gulf Side..If so, lucky you!

Oh...I had no idea! I stand corrected!

Yes Mike, I'm in SE Texas. We get something like 65 inches of rain a year on average and the humidity is in the 80%s and 90%s except when the wind shifts out of the north. I think I'm seeing a correlation in the comments linking spider mites to lower humidity.

The spider mites are gone. I have harvested my lemons. The leaves are all falling off. I am sure i need to transplant. Tell me again what 5-1-1 is---- I think of fertilizer when I see 3 numbers together but I think it is a ratio of soil. Please refresh my brain.

Kmadsen, it is a potting mix of 5 parts pine bark fines (I use reptibark, sold in pet stores, but I get if off Amazon), 1 part perlite, 1 part peat moss (I use less than 1 part peat moss), then you add 1 tbsp lime per gallon of mix, and many of us also add Oscomote plus slow release fertizer.

Ok I have purchased everything above. Now just curious i read on another thread about taking my tree to the shower and getting rid of all of the old soil.

I know this is a bad time to transplant but I am pretty sure I will loose "Limey" if I wait until spring. Has anyone done this with success?

How far up the trunk do i put 5-1-1? Do I stop at root level?

Use it like any other potting soil/mix. Plant only as deep as you would any other soil -- just to the root flare.

I've read this thread with great interest. This year I crumbled mosquito dunk onto the soil of the plants that I am overwintering (several citrus, but also maypops, geraniums, begonias, mandevilla etc) and so far no problem with fungus gnats, unlike past years.

In the past, I have used Neem oil and EcoSmart spray for spider mites with good success.

Laura, have the mites been killed? Do you have any signs of more again? If you have not treated again since you started this thread, they would be spreading again by now..I am hoping you have carried on with another treatment since your last post)))

Kmadsen4, you should stop at root level ,and yet there would be nothing wrong with stopping lower than that to show off the top of the root joined at the trunk..Never above the root level covering the trunk whether in containers or ground..

Laura, how's the mites situation? Better?

Do the fungus gnats harm the roots. I noticed some flying around :(

I don't think so sunshine. I have those a bit also. Mike, the mites are under control at the moment, but I've been very rigorous about spraying. I use various combinations to keep them guessing!

I have read on the Internet that they cause root damage but I have never noticed any plant suffer from even heavy gnat infestation and I have been container gardening for decades. In fact, I don't do anything to get rid of them because there usually aren't enough of them to bother me. I know some people get all a twitterpated at the sight of a few of them but not me.

The only plants they have seemed to cause problems with is my tiny flower seedlings. I am not convinced it is just the gnats though, because to have gnats you also need moist conditions, and that in itself can cause the death of many small seedlings

I think the powdered DE caused root rot and I was unable to save my tree. It will be chalked up to a learning experience. When available I will be purchasing a new tree and I will use 5-1-1 from the beginning. Any suggestions for a variety to look for when I purchase?

Im lucky to have avoided spider mites, just a few thrips that I seem to have got rid of. And some fungus gnats.

But, I discovered a LOT of little bastards in the soil of mine Ficus elastica.

I did some research and diagnosed them as some sort of soil mites. Fast moving buggers.

What Ive red they eat organic matter and are sort of predators(actually I saw couple of those catch springtails after 30min of watching their behaviour), but Im still worried. Do they eat roots?

Have you checked your roots for 'root mealy bug'? They are very sneaky and can slowly kill your tree over time without anyone ever knowing it like they did to mine once..