🕷️ Spider Mite
Tetranychus urticae
Eight legs, zero mercy, and a silk-spinning side hustle.
How to identify
They're pinhead-sized — hold a white paper under a suspect leaf and tap; the 'dust specks' that move are mites, often reddish or pale green. Leaves develop fine yellow stippling that turns bronze, and heavy infestations drape the leaf undersides in delicate silk webbing.
Damage signs
Feeding punctures thousands of leaf cells, leaving stippled, bleached foliage that turns bronze and drops early. Webbing collects dust, photosynthesis tanks, and a bad outbreak can defoliate beans, tomatoes, or cucumbers in weeks during hot, dry weather.
Plants it attacks
Tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, strawberries, houseplants, ornamentals, nearly everything when hot and dry
Non-chemical controls
- Blast the leaf undersides with a hard jet of water every 3–4 days — mites hate getting wet, and the spray physically knocks colonies off.
- Release Phytoseiulus persimilis, a predatory mite that eats nothing but spider mites and hunts them relentlessly — nature's tiny exterminator.
- Prune out the worst-infested leaves and trash them; don't compost, or you're just relocating the problem.
- Keep plants well-watered and dust-free — spider mites explode on drought-stressed, dusty plants, so mulch and overhead rinses help.
- Avoid broad-spectrum sprays of any kind; they wipe out the predatory mites and insects that were keeping spider mites in check, causing worse flare-ups.
- Space plants for airflow and isolate new houseplants for two weeks — mites hitchhike on leaves and love a crowded canopy.
Nerdy fact: Spider mites aren't insects — they're arachnids, closer to spiders and ticks. They spin actual silk, so technically your infested plant is decorated with tiny spider webs. Congratulations on the haunted garden.