Hi there,

I've never posted on the garden side before, so I hope I'm in the right place.

To start, I live just outside of Toronto, Canada.

I have a corner lot, so lots of land for landscaping. I mainly have all evergreens - and most are speciality plants.

I had a Shishigashira Japanese Maple, who wasn't doing too well. It would always get cobwebs, but we just assumed it was regular spiders. Then we thought, well it must be getting too much sun because the leaves started to brown and curl (I will attach pictures at the bottom) - my husband and I decided it's time for the little guy to sadly go. We dug him up and put him in a bag and took him straight to the dump - because we were starting to worry about the spider webs. We have another Japanese Maple (Bloodgood), which we were also having issues with this year. Toronto had a very cold spring, and a lot of the branches had buds, but they didn't push out. A few weeks ago, I cut a few pieces off and it was still green inside - but I cut again today and noticed it was dead inside. I trimmed it all off - and noticed this Japanese Maple also had cobwebs - mainly where the twigs were that didn't push through with leaves.

I made a quick soap/water mixture and sprayed the Japanese Maple all over - then washed off with a hose - cut all the dead off, then kept washing a few times to make sure I didn't leave any residue. I thought, "Okay! Everything should be fine now!" ... but I was wrong! :(

I told my husband what I had done, and he asked if I saw any webs on any other plants. I didn't think to look, so we started going around and all of our plants had spider webs (weeping norway spruce, columnar spruce (all 3), dwarf bald cypress, lilac bush, white japanese pine, austrian pine, etc etc. I went around and took a glove and started wiping all the webs away, then went back with a hose with full power. I then went back and was inspecting closer to the columnar spruce, and actually saw the spiders! :( I assume they are spider mites? I've never had them before so I'm not sure what they look like. I tried looking them up on google image search, but it's hard to tell. I also saw a green bug (you can see in one of the videos)... wasn't sure what he was.

Does anyone have any advice as to what these spiders are? And, can "regular" spiders that don't do harm cast their webs all over our plants, or if you see a web it's usually a problem? We have a lot of Norway Spruces (12+ including different trees and shrubs) - And I read there are spruce mites, but they didn't seem to look the same - but maybe I am still in shock I'm just not looking correctly.

I'm not sure what to do. I do not want to use any harmful pesticides, as I do feed the birds and squirrels, and also don't want to harm our environment. I read there are safe alternatives (blasting a hose, soap/water mixture (but is this safe on evergreens? should this be washed off immediately?), pesticides that are organic and safer than the hard stuff. I even read ladybugs and/or buying predator mites. I also read that it's better to use ladybugs/predator mites so the system can do it's thing - and spraying is only a temp solution.

This is also two days after our very large cherry tree was infested with aphids (which we have never had before - and have lived in our home for 7 years). We put in a new fence last year, and planted a lot of new things - wasn't sure if disturbing soil brings these guys our or what. Looking for any information or advice anyone has so I can try to sleep tonight... :(

SO, overall:

- What are the spider looking things? Mites?

- How to get rid of them naturally? Buy predator mites? Buy ladybugs? Keep hosing every day? Use soap/water mixture? Organic and safe spray?

- What is the green looking bug (in video) crawling on columnar spruce? Something that eats the mites or another issue all together?

- Are all spider webs on conifers/maples/etc always mites or can be a normal spider trying to catch some flying bugs for dinner?

- We have a lot of ants this year (I assume the new fence didn't help) - I know they are good for the aphids (helping them survive), but do they also help the mites survive? I always see a lot of ants on our spruces.

Thank you for your time!

- Jessica

PS - the video and picture showing the green maple is from yesterday, as we took it down and disposed of it today - but shows the webbing that is also similar to all of our other plants - and it's hard to tell, but in the video of the Japanese Maple - the lower left you can see a spider - I think it's the same as I saw on the Spruce, but was hard to tell.

Thanks again!

Videos are here:

Columnar Spruce

Columnar Spruce - what is the green bug?

Now removed Japanese Maple