I'm becoming semi-anti-mite!

They MIGHT be my Mighty White Mite Warriors. (Or, they could just be invading my homeland.)

mite4.jpg

Heroes or Villains?

After "waiting and seeing" for a couple weeks, I posted here asking for information and opinions about these little uninvited settlers. I received 3 "undecided" responses, and one "good" response, leaving me still uncertain how to proceed.

So, I weighed the pros and cons:

Pros


  • there are NO webs anywhere
  • no spots on leaves
  • nothing visible on underside of leaves
  • plants appear very happy
  • no significant increase in numbers

  • Cons


    • they're walking around on the plants!
    • they might be biting stems, like aphids?
    • are they planning a trichome ambush?

    • Here's another attempted closeup...

      This time, it's walking on a glass bead:

      mite1.png

      By my estimation they're less than 1mm long, full grown. There do appear to be wispy white appendages.

      mite2.jpg

      mite3.jpg

      Pretty gross, right? But like I said, the plants appear healthy:

      overall.JPG

      In fact, I'd like to show you the top of a Northern Lights seedling I snipped the other day:

      plants1.JPG

      2 gorgeous healthy new tops! They start just above the 5th true node. Now, check out this beauty:

      plants2.JPG

      At 6 weeks old (from seed), these plants are doing fine. If they're losing any juice to their invaders, it's not enough to make a noticeable difference. (Yet?)

      And Steem OG?

      All 3 are doing well, despite the unidentified white settlers. I used the FIM ("fuck, I missed!") method on one of them, resulting in 2 new tops, along with strange bonus growth from the snip:

      plants3.JPG

      Here's another view of that interesting top:

      plants4.JPG

      Summary

      The plants are happy, but could be getting abused by these friendly-appearing newcomers. They're not spinning webs, which is always a relief when we encounter animal wildlife in our gardens. Their numbers don't seem to be getting out of hand, but to be honest I'd rather they'd never shown up.

      And with all that said, remember, this is a 100% natural garden that uses only soil, light, water, and air to grow cannabis. If there's a solution, it will have to consider that. I don't want to have to resort to something drastic, like yanking them and washing their roots so they can go into fresh soil and new pots. Or worse, culling and starting over. Ugh.

      In my previous post, I said I wasn't necessarily anti-mite. After further research, and consideration, I think you now understand why I'm becoming...

      Semi-anti-mite.

      Your input welcome. Thank you.
      DRutter

      drutter steemit banner.jpg

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