Neem helps, not as a "kill-on-contact" but as a long-time prevention...IF YOU APPLY IT CORRECTLY. Because most Neem/Karanja oil products must be mixed into an emulsion, you cannot just mix an oil into water, folks! Get bottled water (unless you have very soft tap water) and add some insecticidal soap (aka. Castille soap or potassium soap) to make an emulsion. (Hard tap water wont work since soap doesn't lather well in very hard water, it would flake). Then add the Neem oil to the emulsion...and finally you need to bring the ph of the mixture down (soap has a very high ph of 11 ) so add some squirts of lemon juice to get ph to 5ish. As you can imagine, the combination insecticidal soap (which kills the mites instantly and helps washing your plants, gets rids of the eggs etc. when you spray) PLUS the Neem oil in the soap emulsion is the perfect combination. Now repeat when you have a massive mite invasion in 3 days, otherwise repeat every 14 days. Feel free to spray preventive as well. Get a decent manual garden pressure sprayer, it makes a big difference as compared to using a tiny pump sprayer. (The €15 pressure sprayer I got is like the best investment I did in ages :) If you have a garden or porch: Hose your plants thoroughly, carefully but forcefully enough with water from the hose. You want to wash everything, mites, eggs etc. off first! Then use pressure sprayer with your insecticidal (potassium) soap emulsion w/ Neem oil and spray GOOD, underside of the leaves, top, everywhere. Don't spray in the heat of the day or direct sun, spray early morning or evening. There are not too many mites who would survive this, insecticidal soap and Neem is the best there is, entirely organic, non-toxic and the soap will actually turn to fertilizer (potash). If people failed with Neem it's because they didn't do it right! (And yes I made the rookie mistake too, getting Neem, mixing it with tap water and spraying...it won't to a thing like this, you need to do it right!) I'd go so far as to say insecticidal soap alone is pointless (because the mites will come back) and Neem oil alone isn't optimal either, because you want to get rid of them right away, so use both in combination, it's the perfect mite killer and prevention in one!)

The product you looked at is Organocide. I've heard, too, that it is pretty stinky. But so is Neem oil, when used inside. No, you cannot make a mixture of culinary sesame oil and water and use it on your plants. ESPECIALLY at the rate you've proposed. Products that have oils of some kind in them are packed full of emulsifiers and very LITTLE oil. And do you know how strong the odor of sesame oil is? I keep some handy at all times for the sushi rolls (for the rice) I make, and it even smells through the container. Your helpful guy was also wrong about the ingredients in Ivory being the same as what is in a commercial insecticidal soap. Ivory dish 'soap' is not a soap at all, but a detergent. Much more capable of damaging your plants and less effective on the pests. For something that is the safest for your plants, safe to use around you and your pets, and most efficient at controlling the pests, I strongly urge you to spring for the commercial insecticidal soap. Perfectly safe to use on your herbs, too. But you know what? You should have the pests identified first of all. You'll not likely find a knowledgeable professional at Home Depot. Try your local extension office, or a garden center staffed with a horticulturist. A decent garden center will have Neem oil, by the way. If you can take pictures and post them here, we can ID for you.

Kim Rupert wrote about marigold is a spider-mite magnet and as if these flowers spontanenously generate spider mites! My Eglantyne was right next to a marigold! I could not get rid of spider mite until I moved the rose to a different location and alcohol its infected part. According to Field Roebuck, garlic chives deter both spider-mites and aphids. Garlic chives is very invasive and time-consuming to kill. Cutting the flowers off is a must, before they seed everywhwere! If not, you'll spend eternity digging zillions of tiny bulbs. Hi JeriJen: it's amazing that miticide can melt a plastic spoon. I was spraying a hornet nest, and the chemical got on my t-shirt, went through the fabric and burnt my skin. The hornet and wasp spray is cheap, like $2, but extremely poisonous. One guy didn't wash his hands after spraying, ate a sandwich, had a seizure and went into a coma. He had a near-death-experience, and was hospitalized for 6 months. He had to learn how to walk all over again. They should ban insecticides altogether. I told my hubby how the wasp spray burnt my skin, he went out there and dismantled the nest with a stick. It did the job, no need for spray.

Okay, lets be clear; the brown leaves aren't 'diseased" in that the plant doesn't have a disease. It has a pest infestation - different thing - and the pests are causing the brown leaves. Those leaves are just responding to the pest attacking the plant. The plant itself is not harbouring illness. I make this point: to show you that there's nothing actually wrong with the brown leaves, they're a byproduct, an 'indicator', so don't worry about them. You wont get them to turn green again where they've gone brown and cutting off the brown leaves isnt addressing the problem - the pest. So to address your problem: your pest is spidermites. So this looks good to me: http://www.ehow.com/about_6317228_spider-mites-white-gardenias.html I would treat the spidermites as outlined above. Then I'd repot into 511 (bc gardenias are happier in it and by that I mean they are more resistant to disease and pests). I'd also (given the above post and the fact your gardenia is indoors) think about ways to increase humidity (some ppl like misting, or using a pebble/water tray?) and aeration (can it be placed closer to a window?). Make sense?