It would seem that flower growers who have been growing plants for many years know everything about protection from pests, and are trying to take preventive measures to ensure that these same pests do not infest themselves. But despite the fact that we create the conditions necessary for plants, properly water and spray, fertilize and replant, as required by agricultural technology, our green pets still get sick from time to time. There are simply pests that can appear even with careful and constant care, and spider mites are one of these.
In fact, there are a great many varieties of ticks in nature, and, oddly enough, some of them are absolutely necessary. For example, soil mites are needed to maintain decomposition processes in the soil and form a nutrient medium.
But today we will talk about harmful spider mites, of which there are also several types, and all of them are dangerous for plants.
Ticks are small, up to 1 mm (maximum 2 mm) sucking arthropod arachnids. They are transparent, milky, yellow, red or orange.
Like all mites, spider mites are sucking arachnids. Their harmfulness lies in the fact that, feeding on the juices of the plant, they deprive it of its strength. The first signs of mites are small light dots on the surface of the leaves - puncture marks.
The red spider mite is more common than others. It is this pest that infests my favorite balsams when I take them out into the open air in the summer. No matter how hard I fight this scourge, by the end of summer, just after a period of intense heat, the leaves begin to become overgrown with cobwebs - this is the work of mites. The web is a product of their vital activity, but it is not dangerous for the plant. The main problem is the mite itself; like a vampire, it sucks the juices of the flower.
Among the mites dangerous to plants, in addition to the common spider mite, there is the Atlantic spider mite. If you breed exotic types of flowers, you can get acquainted with flat mites. They especially love cacti, various types of citrus and ficus fruits, and euonymus, but they do not disdain simpler flowers.
And I would call the most insidious of the sucking pests root and bulb mites, which damage the underground parts of flowers. More precisely, destroying, since it is almost impossible to notice this microscopic insect underground in time, and as a result, when digging, you get a eaten onion or rags instead of roots.
We all take care of our flowers, protect them, but sometimes conditions arise that contribute to the appearance of spider mites. For example, if the air in the room is dry and warm, and in apartments with central heating it is exactly like that in winter. Solution: either constantly spray the flowers, or buy an air humidifier.
Spider mites love to settle in old dried leaves that you did not remove in a timely manner, and then they move onto the plant. Dust on the leaves is also a comfortable environment for mites, so try not to let your flowers become covered in a layer of dust.
Be careful not to miss the first symptoms of a spider mite attack on a flower: first, small discolored dots appear, which can increase to the size of spots, a cobweb appears on the back of the leaf, and the leaf itself curls up. New mites hatch in the web, and meanwhile the leaves already fall off, the plant weakens, withers and may die.
Real flower growers do not like to resort to chemical means of insect control. I don’t like it either, but in the case of spider mites, such a measure is completely justified.
Of course, if you notice the disease in time, at the stage of the first single small puncture points, then you can get by by treating the plant with a solution of insecticidal soap: rub it finely, dissolve it well in water and thoroughly rinse each leaf of the damaged plant on both sides. In addition, you need to treat the flowerpot and the place where the flower stands with the solution.
But the problem is that most often we notice the disease already when the plant changes its appearance: spots appear on the leaves and cobwebs appear on their underside. And there are no more ticks to count. Therefore, insecticides have to be used. Now there is a very large selection of necessary drugs: fitoverm, neoron, fufanon, agravertin. I personally use Actellik, which, although it is unsafe for people and animals, after treatment with Actellik there will be no spider mites on my flowers for a long time.
I also heard about the use of special sticks: Plant-Pin and Etisso. They are stuck into the soil with an infected flower, and the active substance (poison against ticks) dissolves when the soil is watered and is absorbed by the roots of the plant. Poisonous sticks are especially convenient for treating violets, which do not like wet spraying. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the opportunity to use these drugs.
It is necessary to treat the flower with chemicals carefully, since mites can enter a state of diapause and successfully wait out the consequences of your procedure. By the way, before processing, remove all damaged leaves and flowers.
So, dissolve actellik in the ratio specified by the manufacturers. If you have a 5 ml ampoule, dissolve it in 1 liter of warm water and then pour it into a container with a spray bottle. Spray the entire plant thoroughly. Places that are difficult to wet by spraying can be wiped with a sponge soaked in the solution. It is advisable to spray not only the diseased plant, but also those that are nearby. I wipe the area under the flower with alcohol.
Spider mites are a member of the arachnid family, and most pest control products are not designed to kill spiders, so fighting them is quite labor-intensive and time-consuming. Exist different kinds spider mites, the most common are red, ground and common. These pests spoil indoor and garden plants by sucking the juices out of them.
Ticks overwinter under fallen leaves, in sheds, in crevices in trees and other places where severe frost cannot penetrate. The lifespan of ticks is up to 1 month; during this period, females manage to lay up to hundreds of eggs. The eggs hatch in 3-4 days and their length does not exceed 0.1 mm.
The tick prefers to hide under the foliage, entangling it with a thin web and sucking out the juices. White dots are visible on the top of the sheet at the puncture sites. Subsequently, the leaves turn yellow and begin to fall off. Because of this, plants stop growing normally, and the growing season ends prematurely. If measures are not taken in time, the plant may die.
Treatment consists of regularly spraying the leaves and wiping with a damp cloth; cobwebs should not appear on the leaves. The most dangerous period for houseplants is winter; hot radiators make the indoor air dry, which is ideal for spider mites.
How to get rid of spider mites using a special product - you should purchase drugs such as Intavir, Fitoverm or Karbofos, the drugs should be diluted in proportions with water, as written in the instructions. Mite repellents should be sprayed onto the plant, after which a plastic bag is placed over the plant and tied to the pot and left for several hours.
To effectively combat ticks, it is necessary to disinfect the soil; for this you will need the following preparations: “Temik” or “Aldicarb”, they should be added to the soil.
How to deal with spider mites and their eggs? To combat, you should use sulfur and phosphorus-containing preparations. The plant, soil and windowsill should be sprayed with a sulfur solution. To make the results more effective, you can use different products alternately, this eliminates the possibility of ticks becoming accustomed to the products used.
If the plant is severely damaged and cannot be sprayed, place a few chopped garlic cloves on the ground and cover the flower with a bag for several hours. The smell of garlic will repel ticks; garlic can be replaced with turpentine.
Special lamps for plants are not only safe, but also useful and strengthen their resistance to various diseases. Spider mites are afraid of ultraviolet rays, so they hide from the sun on the inside of the leaf. The ultraviolet lamp should be turned on for a few minutes several times a week, try to place it in such a way that the rays penetrate both from below and from above the leaves.
When purchasing, you should select ultraviolet lamps designed to illuminate plants; they emit a spectrum of rays that plants receive in nature. Other bulbs may emit too much rays, which can harm the plant.
A spider mite is an animal that belongs to the phylum arthropod, class Arachnida, subclass mites, superorder acariform mites, order thrombidiform mites, superfamily Tetranychoidea. This article describes the family of spider mites (also known as true spider mites) (lat. Tetranychidae).
The first reliable information about spider mites appeared in the 16th–17th centuries, and their scientific description, made by Carl Linnaeus, has been known since the 18th century. Females, larvae and nymphs of most tetranychid species produce webs. With the help of it, they protect their offspring, protect themselves from predators, wind blowing, temperature fluctuations, high humidity and dust. The web also helps them spread to territories remote from their birthplace.
Spider mites are tiny herbivorous arthropods ranging in size from 0.2 to 1 mm. They have well-developed sexual dimorphism: males are much smaller than females, and their body has a more elongated shape.
Adult individuals have a solid structure, without segmentation. Their body is only conditionally divided into sections, and traces of former dismemberment are preserved in the arrangement of the Hittites (setae). The Hittites, varied in shape, walk in regular transverse rows: parietal, scapular, shoulder, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and caudal. The bristles of spider mites can be needle-shaped, feathery or leaf-shaped. They perform the function of touch.
The body of spider mites is covered with a thin structured cuticle, which can also be compacted: in this case, it forms scutes. The integument often forms tubercles, folds or points. The body color of spider mites can be pale or greenish-yellow with dark spots (visible internal organs) on the dorsal side. Species with bright scarlet pigmentation are known. As winter approaches, adult females turn orange or red. Spider mite larvae have 6 legs and a yellow-green body. Nymphs and adult arachnids have 8 legs.
The thin legs of arachnids end in a complex claw device, with the help of which mites cling to leaves. On the ventral side of ticks there is a reproductive apparatus. In females it is represented by a concavity covered by a cuticular fold. Males have a copulatory organ located on the back of the body.
The mouthparts are piercing-sucking type. The mouthparts of spider mites, chelicerae, are adapted for piercing the skin of plants and sucking sap. The main segments of the chelicerae are fused, and they contain two modified segments in the form of retractable stylets. The arachnoid gland of mites is located on the head side inside the fused short segments of the pedipalps. Tetranychids have two pairs of simple red eyes that respond to the short-wavelength part of the spectrum. They are located on the second conditional segment of the body from the head. The stigmata (openings) of the trachea open at the base of the chelicerae.
Spider mites feed on plant cell sap. Their salivary glands secrete an enzyme that destroys the chloroplasts of plant cells. Most often, animals settle on deciduous trees or grasses, but there are also lovers of coniferous flora. Some types of spider mites (polyphages) can feed on hundreds of different plants, others (oligophages) have a limited set of preferred plants, and there are also monogamous species (monophages) that drink the juice of only one representative of the plant flora. Cotton, soda, melons, ornamental plants in open ground, greenhouses and indoor crops are especially affected by the mass reproduction of spider mites.
Spider mites live everywhere except Antarctica. More than 100 species of these animals have been discovered in Russia. The boundaries of the habitat of the tetranychid family are limited only by the average annual temperature of 4.5 ° C. During outbreaks of reproduction and lack of food, mites migrate in search of fresh plant leaves. At the same time, they accumulate on the edges of the leaves, forming moving balls with rapidly moving individuals. In open places, the wind helps them settle.
As a rule, spider mites love dry and warm weather. When air humidity rises, they experience depression. Arthropods are unable to remove excess water supplied with food, as a result of which they experience physiological starvation and intensive reproduction stops.
The fertility of ticks depends on the climate, time of year, the nutritional value of the plant on which they find themselves, the age of the females, and much more. Spider mites reproduce especially actively in dry weather at temperatures above 25°C. In tropical latitudes and greenhouses, their reproduction occurs continuously throughout the year. These arachnids can produce up to 20 generations in 12 months. In temperate climates, spider mite offspring appear once a year; in favorable weather, this number increases.
Fertilization in spider mites is not the same as in other acariform species: it is internal and occurs without the deposition of spermatophores (capsules filled with seminal fluid). Virgin development (without the participation of male reproductive cells) is also found. Unfertilized eggs produce only males with a single (haploid) set of chromosomes.
The development cycle of spider mites consists of the following phases:
The spider mite egg is round, translucent, 1 mm in diameter. On average, per day, females lay 7 eggs with a stalk to attach them to a leaf or web. In summer, in temperate climates, they place eggs on the lower surface of leaves, and in winter they hide future offspring in cracks in the bark or in fallen leaves. Thus, at the egg stage, spider mites can easily survive the winter.
The spider mite larva is similar in lifestyle to the adult, but unlike it, it has 6 legs.
It is slightly larger than a larva, with 4 pairs of legs and coloring characteristic of the species.
This stage is observed only in females. Males have only one nymph stage.
Neoteny is a phenomenon in which the achievement of sexual maturity and the end of ontogenesis occurs at early stages of development, for example, at the larval stage.
Spider mites become adults 10–20 days after emerging as eggs. At all stages except the larval stage, they have 8 legs.
During the warm season, spider mites live from 2 to 4 weeks. The lifespan of females overwintering in diapause reaches several months.
With the beginning of leaf fall and the decrease in daylight hours to 16 hours, many fertilized female spider mites go into the soil and overwinter there, entering diapause. Diapause is a way for ticks and insects to survive an unfavorable period. At this time, all vital processes in animals slow down. They hardly move, consume 5.2 times less oxygen and do not eat anything. Since they spend little energy, the substances they store in the epithelium of the midgut are consumed very slowly. During diapause, the animal's body becomes resistant to temperature changes, excess and lack of moisture, and the effects of poisons.
When there is up to 14 hours of daylight, only winter female ticks develop. In winter, they can tolerate temperatures as low as -28 degrees Celsius. Wintering species of spider mites die at a temperature of -9°C, while summer females die already at 0°C. In the spring, when the air temperature reaches +12+14°C, female spider mites come out, settle on the lower part of plant leaves, entwine them with cobwebs and lay eggs. The first spring generations develop on weeds - nettle, quinoa, plantain, etc. By mid-summer, spider mites move to cultivated plants and continue to develop on them.
Below is a description of some types of spider mites.
Adult ticks are greenish-gray, dark green or yellow, with a convex upper and flat lower surface of the body. They inhabit the lower part of leaf blades, covering them with a thick layer of web. Common spider mites live in colonies. Under favorable conditions, the female lays over 100 greenish-transparent spherical eggs within three weeks. In a year, animals can leave from 8 to 18 generations. By the time they molt, spider mite eggs become pearly. Tick larvae are transparent, light green or greenish-brown in color with two dark spots on the sides. It takes three weeks for the juveniles to go from egg to adult, during which time new generations appear and overlap each other. The colony simultaneously contains common spider mites at all stages of development: eggs, larvae, nymphs, mature females and males.
In the second half of summer, in temperate climates, fertilized females preparing for winter appear in the colonies. They turn orange-red in color, stop feeding and go into the soil or under peeling bark, leaving a trail of cobwebs along the way. They overwinter in dense groups in leaf litter and soil. In the southern regions, common spider mites reproduce constantly and do not hibernate, bringing up to 20 generations per year.
The common spider mite is especially harmful to cotton, soybeans, and cucumbers, but it also affects other vegetable, horticultural, and melon crops. He loves apple trees, currants, strawberries, gooseberries and all stone fruits. Purple-red spots form on the leaves of the cotton plant, they are abundantly covered with cobwebs, and over time the leaves completely change color and fall off. The buds of the plant also fall off, which significantly reduces the cotton yield. In Central Asia, such a picture is called “kanasy”, “urgamchak”, and in Transcaucasia it is called “chor”.
The eggs laid by red spider mites are reddish, shiny, and are attached to a leaf or web. As they develop, they become cloudy, and red dots—the eyes of the embryo—begin to be visible through the translucent shells. Before molting, the eggs become opalescent. They hatch into six-legged larvae. They first feed and then freeze as a chrysalid, from which nymph I, the protonymph, hatches. She also feeds and then freezes in the form of nymphochrysalid I. When molting, nymph II emerges from her - deuteronymph. After a period of feeding, it passes into nymphochrysalid II, from which an adult female or male subsequently emerges.
The hawthorn mite lives on Rosaceae: plum, cherry plum, hawthorn, rowan, apricot, serviceberry, apple tree, etc. The leaves of fruit trees first become covered with yellow-gray spots and then fall off. Fruits on damaged shoots grow smaller than usual. Crop losses can reach 40%, especially in dry years.
Females of this species of mites are dark red in color with white legs and a white gnathosoma, their length is 0.5–0.6 mm. The lifespan of females is about 3 weeks, during which the animals lay up to 100 eggs on the surface of the leaves, covering them with cobwebs. They overwinter under the bark of trees.
Pale green females reach a length of 0.3 mm. In favorable conditions, animals produce up to 10-12 generations per year. In summer, females live 2-3 weeks, in winter - several months.
The mite's ovoid body, convex above and below, is 0.3–0.6 mm long, colorless and covered with a soft cuticle. The greenish color appears in the Turkestan spider mite because it eats the cell sap of plants with chlorophyll. The spots on its body are the remains of digested food visible through the integument.
Wintering females are red. They spend the cold period of the year under fallen leaves, withstanding temperatures of -25°C, but dying at -29°C. In summer, female Turkestan spider mites live on average 30 days, with a maximum of 80 days. They lay 3-20 eggs a day, and in total there are at least 400 of them. Both males and females emerge from fertilized eggs, only males emerge from parthenogenetic eggs.
In the photo: A. Egg, B. Larva, C. Protonymph, D. Deutronymph, E. Adult female, F. Adult male. Photo credit: Systematic & Applied Acarology Society, all rights reserved. www.bione.org
The tick has a red-brown or black body 0.5 mm long with yellow legs, the front of which are much longer than the others. During the growing season, it raises up to 3 generations of young. In the fall, the female lays eggs on the soil that will overwinter.
It settles mainly on deciduous trees of the Rosaceae family; it also infects grapes, alder, elm, mulberry, oak, and linden. It is most numerous on apple trees in early summer. In summer ticks have green color body, by autumn the females turn red.
A predatory mite (left) attacks a red fruit mite (right). Photo credit: CSIRO, CC BY 3.0
Red fruit mite eggs on an apple tree. Photo credit: University of Georgia Plant Pathology Archive, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org; CC BY 3.0
Sign: The photo shows what spider mites look like on indoor and garden plants: cucumbers (1), rose (2), cactus (3), lemon (4). Photo 3 taken from: www.cactusnursery.co.uk. Author of photo 4: Paramecium, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Spider mites harm the plant by piercing the cells of the parenchymal photosynthetic tissue and damaging the chloroplasts. The reaction of plants to such an invasion may differ slightly. Signs of spider mite infestation are as follows:
The female spider mite and the eggs she lays overwinter in the soil and under the bark of trees. In the spring, they colonize nearby suitable weeds, and later, cultivated plants.
The spider mite is an animal, which means it has the ability to actively move. Even if he leads a sedentary lifestyle, sooner or later food runs out in his old place, and he starts looking for a new place to live. Spider mites travel on their webs with the help of the wind and slowly crawl over short distances.
How do spider mites appear in an apartment? We introduce the pest to indoor and greenhouse plants with new seedlings, soil, and things. Spider mites can also enter an apartment on their own: through open window sashes, descending from upper floors or nearby trees.
If you take some precautions, you can prevent the pest from appearing. And yet, it is much easier to protect house plants from tick attacks; this is more difficult to do in open ground.
When purchasing new plant species, you need to keep them separately (in quarantine) for some time, ensuring their safety.
Window sills, tables, shelves and plant pots that touch or are in close proximity to indoor plants should be wiped with alcohol or another disinfectant.
The soil mixture for planting crops must be disinfected. It can be poured with boiling water several times, calcined in the oven, steamed on the stove or in a water bath.
It is necessary to maintain high humidity in the room. To accomplish this task, you can purchase an aerator or constantly spray the plants with a spray bottle.
In the vegetable garden and orchards, you need to remove all weeds, dig up the soil in the fall, removing crop residues, and follow other rules of agricultural technology.
In the greenhouse, you need to set a climate regime in which pests do not live: humidity 80-90%, temperature up to 25 degrees.
As a preventive measure, you can treat plants with acaricidal preparations, and also plant flowers nearby that are never inhabited by spider mites.
This arachnid only brings indirect harm to humans. It does not bite him, does not infect him with diseases, but destroys the plants he has planted. At the same time, crop failures can reach catastrophic proportions. Spider mites contribute to the spread of gray rot spores, viruses that infect the flora, thereby causing additional damage to the crop.
You can get rid of spider mites in different ways. Below are effective options for exterminating this pest.
If one plant is affected, you need to isolate it from the others or remove only the damaged organs. At the initial stage of infection, you can manually remove spider mites from the leaves or wash them off with soapy water. Ticks do not like excess water, which means water treatments and increasing the humidity level to 80-90% will help get rid of them. To do this, the plant needs to be dipped in warm water or sprayed well with a spray bottle, not forgetting the underside of the leaves, and placed in a transparent plastic bag for 2-3 days, securing it above a pot of soil.
In addition to Phytoseiulus, spider mites are destroyed by Amblyseius (Latin: Amblyseius), Western Metaseiulus (Latin: Metaseiulus occidentalis), ladybugs (Latin: Coccinellidae), etc.
Today, the most popular are active drugs to combat spider mites, produced using strains and spores of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. They are safe for humans, plants, warm-blooded animals, birds and beneficial insects. Domestic preparations produced on the basis of this soil bacterium are called Entobacterin, Dendrobacillin, Biotlin, Fitoverm, Bitoxibacillin. Foreign analogues - Trichodermin, Bicol and others. By the way, these products also help in the fight against various caterpillars that eat plant leaves.
Fruit-bearing plants should not be treated with chemicals. If during this period they are bothered by spider mites, you can use effective folk remedies that are easy to make at home:
Below are a few recipes:
Pour half a teaspoon of chopped garlic or a full spoon of finely chopped onion into a glass of boiling water, cover and leave for a day. To remove spider mites from indoor flowers, you need to spray or wash the plant with this infusion several times.
Chop 100 grams of pepper pods and boil in 1 liter of water for an hour. Close and leave for a day. Filter and seal in bottles with tightly ground stoppers. To treat indoor or garden plants against spider mites, mix 8 grams of decoction, a liter of water and 4 g of grated laundry soap. The affected plants are sprayed or washed with this mixture.
200 grams of tobacco or shag are poured with 5 liters of cold water and kept for 24 hours. Then boil for 2 hours and filter. The infusion is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:1 and 50 g of laundry soap is added to it per 5 liters of liquid. This solution must be treated houseplants from spider mites.
Infuse 250 g of tops in 1 liter of water for 4 hours. A plant infected with spider mites should be sprayed with this decoction.
For the most part, decoctions are similar in composition to chemicals and are not harmless to human health. When using them, you need to take all precautions to avoid poisoning and allergies.
You can rid your garden of spider mites with the help of a group chemical substances called acaricides, although other classes of pesticides also have a broad spectrum of action and will help cure plants.
Let us give examples of some well-known means.
To destroy the wintering stages of spider mites, deep plowing of the fields is carried out. In gardens, they dig up the ground next to fruit bushes, in beds, near berry bushes. This technique helps activate predatory insects - rove beetles, ground beetles and others, which are capable of getting into the soil and destroying their victims there (ticks, among others). The positive effect of plowing on limiting harmful species is also that spider mites located in the surface layer of soil will die in winter from low temperatures (-29 ° C).
To get rid of spider mites in greenhouses and greenhouses, in the spring they disinfect the soil with bleach or sulfur bombs.
If last year cases of infestation of plants in open ground were recorded, then it is advisable to leave a significant distance between the beds: this makes it more convenient to fight spider mites in one place, preventing the spread of the pest.
Currently, all crops have varieties and hybrids that are tolerant or resistant to certain types of pests.
In cultivated open ground, all weeds must be removed so that in early spring female spider mites have nowhere to breed.
On soils where nitrogen predominates over potassium and phosphorus, the number of spider mites increases 3 times. Conversely, if phosphorus-potassium fertilizers predominate, then the rate of pest reproduction is limited.
Physical methods of controlling spider mites are based on the destructive effects of high or low temperatures on the pest: in the fall, the soil in the greenhouse is covered with a film, hoses are placed under it and hot steam is released. Plants are also treated with ultraviolet lamps: the radiation has a detrimental effect on spider mites and helps remove them.
As soon as warm spring days arrive, all summer residents go to their plots to begin fighting harmful insects, because if this is not done, the harvest will be meager or it may not even be expected. Many people have blackcurrant bushes in their dachas, which are annually terrorized by insect pests. Their invasion can cause significant damage to plantings and even lead to their death.
This type of mite feeds on currant buds. Its dimensions are very small, impossible to detect unless you look through a magnifying glass, females - up to 0.3 mm, males even smaller. The presence of ticks is recognized by the characteristic traces of their activity. These are carriers of viral diseases, for example, they infect currants with leaf curl, which greatly weakens the bush. In addition, after the feast of the bud mite, weak currants become susceptible to infection by borers, longhorn beetles and stem glassworms.
The insect reproduces very actively in the spring. When the thermometer reaches at least 10 degrees, females lay up to 18,000 eggs. Break the affected bud in half and you will see a solid mass of glassy eggs. After a week, the larvae will begin to hatch.
In autumn and winter, the affected buds have an increased size and a rounded shape compared to healthy ones.
In spring, ticks wake up and their life activity begins . Sick buds do not sprout and leaves, most often they die, rarely deformed. By the time the leaves bloom, the buds are already in full swing with life between two generations of mites - one can contain up to 1 thousand individuals. Actively reproducing, they become crowded and the pests crawl out to find new shelter and food. They find young shoots and buds in the axils of the leaves, crawling onto neighboring plants, thereby spreading further. Damaged buds cannot produce full-fledged shoots and leaves, and the bush blooms poorly.
In summer, the affected bushes look disheveled, the shoots are twisted and underdeveloped. The leaves become deformed, their crowns become lighter, and their structure becomes leathery. The berries do not fully ripen and fall off. Starting in August, new generations of mites invade the kidneys, causing them to look like a ball. If we compare healthy with affected, you can notice that the patients are doubled in size.
This pest must be combated. There are several measures, their choice depends on the stage of development of the tick and the damage caused to the bush.
Many gardeners pour boiling water over currants. This leads to the death of the tick, but the bush becomes stronger and becomes immune to powdery mildew. This procedure is carried out according to the following rules:
This method requires a lot of patience and attention. Buds are selected in winter or spring until they open. This control measure is labor-intensive and does not always work, since it is difficult to distinguish diseased buds from healthy ones, since all buds swell before opening.
Plus, the gardener must carefully examine the entire bush, because if even one infected bud remains, the spread of the bud mite will continue. After collecting the pests, the buds are burned.
The bud mite can damage a young bush by 30-40%. Therefore, in the spring, pruning is carried out right up to the stump, and the branches are burned. Wounds are treated with Nitrafen. Cut branches should not be thrown onto the ground, as other plants will become infected. In July, the regrown shoots are pruned, leaving the strongest ones. Fruiting will begin in a year. If an adult bush is heavily infected, it needs to be uprooted and immediately burned in this place. Starting from the age of six, radical control measures are not used.
The kidney mite does not like sulfur, therefore solutions to combat it are:
Currants are sprayed during and after flowering. Repeated treatment is carried out at half the concentration. Some varieties of currants get burned, so they react to spraying by falling leaves.
Insecticides do not work on arachnids, which include kidney mites. Therefore, acaricides or insectoacaricides are used. These include drugs:
The currant mite is afraid of garlic. To combat it, bushes during budding and after the flowers fall off are treated with garlic solution. To prepare it, take 200 g of chopped garlic and 10 liters of water, mix, filter and immediately spray.
There are currant varieties that exhibit relative resistance to bud mite. These are the following crops:
Planting material must be purchased from trusted sellers. If doubts about the “purity” of seedlings or cuttings still remain, then they are disinfected in the prepared solution, for this they take:
If you want to save your favorite currant bush from the bud mite, you need to cut cuttings from it before the snow melts, at which time the females have not yet laid eggs. The cuttings are treated with karbofos or agrovertin for 15 minutes.
This mite is widespread and can be seen on almost all plants. It also belongs to the arachnids, it has 4 pairs of legs and an almost imperceptible size - up to 0.6 mm. Its larvae suck the juice from young shoots and leaves. As a result, cells die, photosynthesis decreases, and the plant becomes weak and poorly resistant to infections.
Spider mites settle in colonies of several hundred individuals on the underside of leaves. Depending on various factors, they are colored red, brown, orange or yellowish-green. They overwinter under fallen leaves or in the top layer of soil. In the spring, when the buds begin to bloom, they climb onto the plants. The first generation can feed on weeds, then they move to crops. Bushes affected by insects have a harder time surviving winter frosts and lose some of their yield.
The lifespan of a tick is approximately 12-23 days. It depends on the living conditions. So, the most comfortable temperature is 27-30 degrees, while the air humidity should be no more than 60%. Females lay hundreds of eggs throughout their lives; they mature in three days. Spider mites are carriers of various infections, including viruses and fungi.
A sign of the appearance of spider mites on currants is the appearance of bite sites painted with yellow dots. Gradually the leaf becomes marbled, after which it turns yellow. During the life of the pest, sap flow in the leaves is disrupted, then they become dehydrated and dry out.
You need to start fighting spider mites before the females wake up in the spring, when they begin to lay eggs.
Currant bushes before buds open treated with acaricide solutions. The following drugs are suitable:
They protect the plant from mites for 20 days. The tick dies within a day. These drugs are not dangerous for fish, birds, insect predators, with the exception of bees. Therefore, they are used before flowering begins.
In dry and windless weather, the leaves are thoroughly moistened on both sides with a fresh solution. Treat several times, you must wait 4-5 days between treatments. It is worth considering that ticks quickly produce an antidote to the drug, so the chemicals need to be alternated. For example, Sunmite has proven itself well; it acts on all stages of tick development, but it quickly becomes addictive, so populations that are insensitive to the drug appear. It is used once a year. The drugs Apollo, Nissoran, Fufanon have sterilizing effects.
The use of chemical pest control products is not suitable for everyone. Many people prefer to fight them with folk remedies:
Spider mites do not tolerate high air humidity. If you use this Achilles heel of the tick, you can reduce its population by half. Especially in hot weather, irrigating currant bushes will benefit it; it is important to try to ensure that the drops fall on the underside of the leaves.
In the autumn season, for prevention, you need to collect fallen leaves and expose them to fire, since ticks overwinter in them. During the entire growing season, weeds must be removed from the area, maintaining cleanliness, since they are inhabited by pests.
If you follow preventive measures, currants will be less likely to be susceptible to diseases and pest attacks.
Spider mites are dangerous harmful insect from the arachnid family with an average length of up to 1 mm.
In suitable environmental conditions, it develops quickly and produces up to 5 generations per year, feeds on plant sap, which is why trees very soon lose some of their leaves and lag behind in development.
Infection of an apple tree by these phytophages can lead to loss of yield, decreased plant immunity and its susceptibility to bacterial, fungal, infectious and viral diseases.
It is necessary to carry out preventive measures and visual diagnostics of trees; you cannot hesitate when a spider mite is detected; you must immediately begin the fight against it. In advanced cases, mass reproduction of spider mites can cause death of apple trees.
The tick usually settles on underside of the sheet, makes a puncture in plant tissues and sucks out the juice.
On the upper side of the leaf at the puncture sites, necrosis forms - spots of dying cells of white, yellow or brown color.
The colony of pests itself looks like a coating on the back of the leaf.
If the population has reached an impressive size, a thin web is visible to the naked eye on the leaves.
There are many types of this pest and we will give a description of the most common of them, and also show what does a spider mite look like on an apple tree?: Photos are shown below.
Polyphagous, up to 0.4 mm long, so they can only be identified with a magnifying glass. The body of the tick is oval-shaped, reddish in color. Externally, a red fruit mite infestation looks like light yellow spots along the veins on the leaves, which then darken and die.
Adult insects are up to 0.6 mm long, the body is flat, brown in color. They suck the juice from both the buds and leaves, which is why they acquire reddish or dirty gray tint, dry out and fall off. Mite larvae molt, leaving silvery marks from their skins on the bark in the moulting areas.
Brown fruit mite.It lives secretly, inside the tissues of leaves and buds, has an even smaller size of up to 0.25 mm, the body is elongated, white, oval, tapering at the back. Forms on the surfaces of leaves galls - spherical swellings of yellow or dark brown color. Due to damage by gall mites, the leaves turn black, dry out and die.
Gall mite and leaf damaged by it.The most dangerous tick destroying young shoots. A diseased bud cannot grow and either does not produce shoots or produces diseased ones. The main sign of attack by these insects is large deformed kidneys.
A less common pest of apple trees. It is 0.2 mm long and yellow-brown in color. The females of this tick species are very fertile and can lay up to 2 million eggs in their lifetime. Due to the active feeding of insects Photosynthesis stops and leaves fall off.
Methods for controlling any insect pests can be divided into several main groups:
Each of them is quite extensive and requires detailed consideration.
This method involves the use of special chemicals, insecticides(from Latin insectum - insect, caedo - I kill). A group of insecticides aimed at killing mites is called acaricides(from Lat. acari - tick, caedo - kill).
There are about 50 types of insecticidal and acaricidal preparations of chemical composition, and only 15 active ingredients in different concentrations, on the basis of which they are made.
Manufacturers use various formulations, the main ones of which are:
Usually insecticides applied by spraying or dusting sick plants.
The drug must be prepared in strict accordance with the instructions, isolating children and pets. Failure to comply with safety precautions can lead to poisoning.
Most Popular insectoacaricides to combat ticks and other insects on an apple tree:
These drugs have stood the test of time and proven their effectiveness.
In addition to spider mites, drugs from this list reduce the number of scale insects, false scale insects, flower beetles, weevils. By treating with such insecticides, you prevent the development of a whole complex of pests.
IMPORTANT! Insecticide treatment should be carried out in dry, calm weather to avoid chemical drift!
A favorite drug of many farmers and gardeners Fufanon CE– chemical insectoacaricide with a wide spectrum of action. It contains the chemical compound malathion. Its effect is more pronounced and fast.
Pests stop feeding within 2 hours after treatment, and die within a day, but the waiting period before harvesting is 26 days, this is the price for the absolute chemical nature of the drug. During the season, following the instructions, you need to carry out no more than two sprays.
The pesticide works both on adult insects and larvae.
Analogues of Fufanon are drugs Karbafos, Kemifos, Novakation, the difference lies only in the amount of the active substance, the highest content is in the preparations Fufanon and Karbofos (570 g/l).
Specific acaricides designed to reduce numbers exclusively ticks. Such drugs have only a contact-intestinal effect (they affect by direct contact with insects), so it is necessary treat the surface of the trees as thoroughly as possible.
Most often, acaricides are produced in the following formulations:
On the plant protection market there are the following acaricidal preparations against ticks:
The determining factor in the effectiveness of an acaricide is the duration of its protective effect. The most pronounced effect is provided by drugs based on propargite.(Omayt SP), up to 15-20 days of protection against ticks.
The drug is considered one of the least toxic for warm-blooded animals and humans. Apollo, and the most harmful Omite.
The main advantage of specific acaricides is their relative safety for natural entomophages. Unlike broad-spectrum insecticides, they do not destroy beneficial insects, which can naturally limit the number of pests.
A drug Fitoverm CE has a controversial classification. It is based on toxic waste from fungi Streptomyces avermitilis, therefore it cannot be confidently attributed to either a chemical or a biological method of protection. However, most often it is defined as a biological product.
The advantage of this drug lies in the conditions of its effective operation. Most chemical compounds are unable to destroy the pest at low temperatures in early spring. Fitoverm, EC begins to act already at 18 °C, and at 25 °C it doubles its strength. Fitoverm has a short waiting period of 2 days, after which you can begin harvesting. The recommended frequency of treatments per season is 2-3 times.
Flaw Fitoverma is that, unlike some chemical hormonal acaricides (Apollo), it only affects adults and does not destroy eggs and larvae.
Aversectin C, which is part of Fitoverm, has a pronounced toxic effect on fish and other aquatic organisms, It should be used with extreme caution near bodies of water. To the processing area children are not allowed, since the harm caused to the human body depends on age, it is more dangerous for people under 21 years of age.
ADVICE! To avoid the development of resistance (resistance) in ticks, do not treat with the same drug several times in a row. This provokes the development of defense mechanisms in the insect population. Alternate insecticides from different chemical groups.
This method applies to prophylactic and preventive. To reduce the number of overwintered ticks, it is necessary to carry out autumn plowing, destroying weeds, getting rid of fallen leaves and removing damaged branches. By burning plant residues you can destroy the eggs deposited by the female tick.
Ticks can also overwinter in bark cracks, so you can carefully clean skeletal branches fruit trees from backward bark in the autumn-winter period.
To increase the immunity of plants after flowering, complex fertilizers can be applied.
A radical way to combat spider mites is to trim the affected shoots of the apple tree and then burn them. It is worth resorting to if the spider mite is about to destroy the tree, and treating the affected areas does not give the desired effect.
An opponent of “chemistry” may also discover that he has a mite on his apple tree: how to treat it in this case? Widely distributed and loved by gardeners folk remedies to combat spider mites, the recipe for which passes from mouth to mouth:
IMPORTANT! These recipes may well bring positive results, but you need to remember that if the number of ticks is high, they will be ineffective and it is necessary to carry out chemical treatment or pruning of trees.
Watch the video on how to treat apple trees against ticks:
To protect the apple tree from spider mites and other pests, there is an established order in which spraying should be carried out during the growing season.
First treatment carried out to destroy ticks and other insects that have overwintered on the apple tree.
Before the buds open in March at temperatures not lower than 5 ºC, trees can be sprayed solution of copper or iron sulfate. Also treat the soil around the apple tree with this solution, because many pests also overwinter in it.
The next spraying should be carried out after bud break and before flowering(in May). Processing can be carried out any of the insecticides or acaricides, which were mentioned above.
Spraying not recommended during flowering. Chemical exposure during this period can negatively affect the harvest and cause the death of bees and other beneficial insects.
Spraying should be carried out only as a last resort, if you were unable to treat the trees against mites before flowering, and their numbers pose a threat to the apple tree.
The following processing needs to be done at the beginning of fruit growth (). The same insecticides should not be used several times in a row.
ATTENTION! You cannot spray apple trees while the fruits are ripening; the last treatment with chemicals should be carried out on average a month before harvest!
Damaged fruits and branches are removed and burned.
The final treatment is carried out and before the leaves fall off with insecticides, copper sulfate or urea to destroy ticks that remain over the winter.
Protecting an apple tree from spider mites is a set of measures aimed at preventing the appearance and direct destruction of a dangerous pest. Small and inconspicuous, it can destroy the harvest of an entire garden.
By wisely using all the knowledge and recommendations obtained from this article, you rid your garden of spider mites and don't let him appear again. Having information about what a spider mite is and how to fight this pest on an apple tree, you you can prevent trouble in time and save your trees and crops.
Every summer pay close attention to species composition on your site, so you will know what to expect from the new season and take the necessary measures on time.
It is worth remembering that the stronger and healthier the tree, the less susceptible it is to attack by diseases and pests. Compliance with agricultural technology, timely and necessary tillage and pesticide treatments is the key to your confidence in a wonderful harvest.
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