Well, as I told you via email, I'd tried using Bayers in the past, in extreme situations, and it failed to do the job. So, between it being so toxic, and it not appearing to work, I just stuffed it in my closet and went back to neem oil and dish soap. Then, recently, I became concerned about how much soap residue might be building up on my Hoya leaves, because they were just constantly getting sprayed with the stuff. So, I decided to give Bayers another go, hopefully eradicate the mealies for good, and then stop constantly treating my plants. Also, the fact that Doug has no mealies really impressed me. (Caveat: I grow indoors and would not personally feel comfortable using it outdoors because it's such an indiscriminate killer.) So, I followed what I loving refer to as "The Patrick Method" which means you wait until the plants are dry, (so they will drink their medicine) then treat them at 2 TBSP/gallon. Then, if you still see mealies a week later, you treat again at 1.5x the original dose (3 TBSP/gallon). I only had to treat one flat twice. And I haven't' seen mealies since. (Well, I have, but because I bought some plants and they came with mealies, and I treated them last night.) Now, I had one hiccup, and that is that all my ellipticas reacted poorly to the Bayers. I'm not sure what the deal was, but immediately after I administered the treatment, they dropped a bunch of leaves and one of them ended up needing to be re-rooted. In fact, 1 of them is still dropping leaves, but the others all bounced back within a couple weeks. I did have some other Hoyas, randomly distributed in the population, that did the same thing, but I didn't record which ones they were. Now, GT, you asked whether elliptica was a thin-leafed and/or fragile Hoya, and this is what I have to say on that subject. Elliptica leaves aren't thin and it is as drought tolerant as the average Hoya, but for some reason it's just a very sensitive Hoya. It's perfectly easy to grow and maintain, so it isn't sensitive in that regard. It roots easily and it is no more likely to up and die on you than any other Hoya. But it takes shipping very hard, it doesn't like to be moved, its leaves are easily damaged by sprays and treatments and soaks, and I've had trouble in the past with its leaves turning pale from nutritional deficiency. It's just a weird Hoya in some regards. So, I wasn't really that surprised when it didn't like the Bayers. I don't know if anyone else has had that experience - I'd never heard anyone mention it. One thing I am interested in, is whether it's okay to use the treatment on plants that are in S/H. I mean, I just went ahead and poured it into my S/H groups and didn't experience any bad reactions. But they didn't have any mealies on them to begin with, and it did get watered down some, so it was a pretty sloppy procedure.

I had them once on a ever green and before I notice a 2 ft area was dead. I asked a nursery man about it and he said you can't see spider mites. He said to put a white sheet of paper under the area and shake the plant, then rub your fingers across the paper. If there are blood smears they are spider mites.

Susanne - Do the leaves look like this? The brown speck is dirt. I noticed that a few of the leaves have a light white dusting. Not sure if it's just dust or something else. I also noticed this morning that there were spider webs. The last several months I've had problems with house spiders so initially I thought it was just my usual spider problem, but now I am wondering if it's a case of spider mites. Here are photos of the webs on the key lime. I've been having problems with the key lime plants. The lemons are fine, but I'm not sure if it's because they are are so much larger than the key limes.

I've also been wondering if putting the potting soil in a bucket full of water would kill spider mites. It might drown the live spider mites, but what about the eggs? Two spotted mite eggs can survive freezing temperatures, so they must be tough. And maybe the live ones can swim, or float and will just pop up to the surface of the water. I've been looking around for advice about this problem, but most of the advice is impractical...such as killing the spider mites on the plant with predatory mites (and no mention of how expensive they are to purchase). I haven't yet tried looking in the potting soil for spider mites, but I have some good LED hand held microscope type viewers and if I can spot spider mites in the used potting soil then I like the idea of putting the soil in black bags out in the hot sun. I'll measure the temperature of the potting soil and see if it gets hot enough to kill these heat loving insects.