Hi - I agree with the folks that Imidacloprid is the way to go. I don't know if it was mentioned, but they could also be hanging out in the soil and root systems, in which case a good systemic is your best best. 2TBS per gallon is reasonable - I have even had success with 1TBS per gallon if I was concerned about the plant. I have been told, though I have never personally witnessed a definitive relationship, that use of Imidacloprid may make plants more susceptible to spider mites. I am not sure why or how...but it just may be something to watch for. Good luck. Tom

answer If it looks like webbing and fuzzy, you have an advanced case of red spider mites - use Orthene then keep plants watered and spray them vigourosuly to keep most of the mites off. Mites love dry weather.

I never have seen mealy bugs on anything except indoor plants or greenhouse plants. I'm not saying you don't have mealy bugs, just that they are more of an indoor pest that an outdoor one and they are hard to combat outdoors. Different pests have different kinds of life cycles. Mealy bugs only live 6 or 8 weeks, I think, but have numerous life cycles per year. Because mealy bugs are related to scale, you can treat for them the same way that you treat plants for scale....by spraying the plants during the DORMANT season with dormant oil. I wouldn't spray even a superfine summer-weight oil in the kind of heat we're having now because it could damage or even kill the plants. You might try spraying the mealybugs themselves with neem oil. You might try spraying with insecticidal soap, especially during this week's cool spell. When you have a small infestation of mealybugs on a houseplant, you often can take care of them by wiping or dabbing the bugs with a swab or cottonball dipped in rubbing alcohol. Jay, who posts here as Elkwc, has been experimenting with spraying some of his plants with rubbing alcohol. If you want to talk with him about how he's doing it in terms of strength of the alcohol and frequency of the spraying, just start a new thread and put Jay's name in the title so he'll be sure to read it. There probably are chemical insecticides that are used for mealybugs, but I don't use chemical insecticides so am not current on them. Certain insects live a part of their life cycle in the soil, but you can't get away from them by moving your herb garden, because they'll just move to the new locations. For grasshoppers, the best solution is Nolo Bait or Semaspore, but they are most effective only when applied at the right temperatures in the spring (April-May) and when grasshoppers are in the younger instars. The best solution for all pest problems is to build up a healthy population of carnivore insects (aka beneficial insects) to eat the herbivore insects, and to encourage the presence of reptiles, apmhibians and birds because they help control pests too. One of my biggest garden helpers is the wild birds. I feed them a little bird seed and keep a birdbath full of clean water for them, and they reward me by sticking around and eating grasshoppers and other pests. Healthy soil will contain microorganisms that help control pests. Healthy soil needs regular additions of organic matter like compost. Dawn

For future reference: I am now pretty sure these were indeed spider mites. I sprayed the plant heavily with a solution of 1 teaspoon dish soap in 1 liter of water, being especially thorough with the underside of the leaves. I did this twice, three days apart, and the problem seems to have been resolved. I never saw any mites on the plant. However, it spread to a couple of nearby plants, on those I could see small black specks underneath the leaves, which appeared to be spider mites. Luckily, it seems the spraying has been more successful then I could ever hope, and all the plants now look clean.