Spider Mites
Risk near you, next 48h
See whether your local forecast favours this disease right now.
When it strikes
Treat, then re-check in 5–7 days
Pick off the worst material, apply the organic option below, and look again after five to seven days. If the spread continued, escalate rather than repeating the same treatment.
Carried by insects
An insect moves it plant to plant, so controlling the carrier matters as much as treating the symptom. Check for the vector before assuming the plants infected each other directly.
Safe to compost
No pathogen carries over on this material, so it can go on an ordinary heap with the rest of the garden waste.
When and where to look
Scout the planting while temperatures hold between 27°C and 40°C, in dry air below 55%. Risk builds after roughly 8 unbroken hours of those conditions, so the morning after such a night is the moment to look.
Rule these out first
Same category, and at least one host crop in common — so they are genuinely confusable in the same part of the garden.
The signs that lead here
Full problem lists for these crops
About
Spider mites are tiny sap-sucking arachnids that explode in numbers during hot, dry, dusty weather, especially on beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and houseplants, and are favoured by drought stress.
Symptoms
Fine pale stippling or bronzing of leaves, delicate webbing on undersides and growing tips, and leaf drop in heavy infestations; tiny moving dots visible with a lens.
Organic Treatment
Raise humidity and hose down foliage, spray insecticidal soap, neem or horticultural oil, and release predatory mites. Keep plants well watered to reduce stress.
Chemical Treatment
Specific miticides (abamectin, bifenazate) rather than broad insecticides, which kill predators and worsen outbreaks.
Prevention
Avoid drought stress and dusty conditions, mist sensitive plants, encourage predatory mites, and isolate infested houseplants.
Crops at risk
Related problems
Spider Mites risk by location
Each location has a month-by-month profile computed from the weather archive: how many hours a year actually meet this disease’s thresholds.