![]() If you like to keep plants outside during the summer, make sure to take precautions to debug your plants before bringing them back inside. You can also try adding peat moss to your soil and making sure your plant isn’t in direct sunlight by using a sheer curtain. Use a humidifier for the room, periodically spray a fine mist on your plants, or leave a container of water to evaporate nearby. Since spider mites like it dry, keeping the air humid around your plants is a great way to deter them from settling on your plant. You can also try using a leaf shine periodically. A good way to discourage them is by wiping dirty leaves periodically and making sure your watering schedule is right for your plant. Spider mites like dusty leaves on plants that are suffering from water stress. Ready to take on the challenge to save your plants? Read on for prevention and treatment methods! It’s possible to quell a spider mite problem, but it will require dedication. Eventually, when enough leaves shrivel up and fall from the plant, the plant can weaken and die. The spider mites target the ‘stomata’ of leaves - kind of like pores that regulate water retention in different environments - making it vulnerable to water loss. Spider mites feed off of materials from plant cells, and as they continue to damage your plant, leaves will become speckled, wilt, turn brown or yellow, and fall off. Their mobility and extremely small size makes it easy for them to arrive unnoticed, even through screens on windows and doors. Where do they come from? Spider mites are wind surfers that range over wide areas by riding their webbing on the breeze. They breed quickly in warm, dry conditions and can be a bigger problem in the winter when your heating system runs and dries out the air. It takes a spider mite just a week to become full grown, and a couple more weeks to lay hundreds of eggs on the undersides of leaves. Sometimes called webspinning mites, these pests are particularly pesky because of their ability to double their population every couple of weeks. Spider mites are difficult to see with the naked eye, but adults have eight legs and little oval bodies and can come in a variety of colors. Other signs of their damage are brown spots and holes in leaves where these pesky critters have chewed straight through. Those are spider mites! It’s hard to see them until their population explodes, and be aware that spider mites also come in brown and red. Looking closer, you will see small, delicate webs in corners of stems or underneath leaves with what look like tiny white dots scattered throughout. The first thing you’re likely to notice is patterns of silvery dots or stippling on the leaves of your plant. Let’s take a look at how you can spot these pests. From a distance, your houseplant with browning leaves might just look a little parched… but take a closer look, hold the plant up to the light and look under the leaves - if you see delicate webbing and tiny little dots moving around, you’ve got a case of spider mites on your hands!
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