Background - over the past 5 months I was battling spider mites.
was - past tense.
There may be some mites if I look long enough and hard enough with a loupe, but no obvious mites issues were noticed for several weeks.
I controlled the mites with 1% neem oil in water with soap emulsifier, fixed up fresh every 2-3 days and sprayed under and over leaves.
2 weeks ago I stopped the intense spraying.
After the mites were not around, I noticed trichome head sized clear and cloudy round somethings in the main fold on the top of leaves. I think they had been there awhile, but I ignored them since the spider mites were worse and they might be spider mite eggs or something. The clear dots would start out just barely visible as a group of 10-20 and grow into a larger mass of perfectly spherical mostly clear balls. Some appeared opaque white, but mostly the whole mass looked opaque while individual spheres looked clear. They were on the tops of leaves only, clumped along the centerline of the leaf.
Here is a photo of clear spheres on the BOTTOM of a leaf - much like what I was only seeing before on the TOP of the leaves in the midline crack of the leaf a week ago. There is a green shield bug shaped rapidly crawing bug with two black spots near it's middle. The spheres are about the size of a trichome spherical head..
Here is an example of how they used to clump together along a leaf spine - although they used to be more concentrated on the center line.
In the past 3-4 days their character has changed.
The white spots are now appearing sprinkled across the leaf. In 40x detail (not pictured) they appear like fuzzy white pillows instead of clear spheres. In this photo there is the same green shield bug shaped rapidly crawing bug with two black spots near it's middle. I ony saw one of these bugs wandering around. It is about half as long as a trichome stem and was ignoring the fuzzy white pillows
Spreading rapidly, this is an example of typical day 1, day2, and day 4 spread. In the top green leaf I see fuzzy white pillows.
In the middle yellow leaf I see connected white blotches, flat and not fuzzy. In the small day 4, it looks like white patches that have been eaten out of the leaves simmilar to leaf miner wounds.
This is a closeup of the day 2 flat white patches again - now accompanied by black spots - none of which seem to be moving.
I resumed spraying with 1% neem oil solution tonight. This slows but does not seem to kill the clear spheres.
Dabbing the clumps of xpheres with 100% neem oil seemed to make them die and disappear. It also did a lot of damage to the leaf where the neem oil was puddled, so I switthed to defoliating all the obviously infected leaves on 2 of the 5 infected plants.
Maybe the spray was effective against the clear spheres but I couldn't tell since they were replaced with the white fuzzy pillows.
I went back to the 1%neem oil spray just in case it helps.
- - - - Bottom Line - - - - - - -
I don't know what is going on or how to stop it from eradicating the plants in my flowering room.
was - past tense.
There may be some mites if I look long enough and hard enough with a loupe, but no obvious mites issues were noticed for several weeks.
I controlled the mites with 1% neem oil in water with soap emulsifier, fixed up fresh every 2-3 days and sprayed under and over leaves.
2 weeks ago I stopped the intense spraying.
After the mites were not around, I noticed trichome head sized clear and cloudy round somethings in the main fold on the top of leaves. I think they had been there awhile, but I ignored them since the spider mites were worse and they might be spider mite eggs or something. The clear dots would start out just barely visible as a group of 10-20 and grow into a larger mass of perfectly spherical mostly clear balls. Some appeared opaque white, but mostly the whole mass looked opaque while individual spheres looked clear. They were on the tops of leaves only, clumped along the centerline of the leaf.
Here is a photo of clear spheres on the BOTTOM of a leaf - much like what I was only seeing before on the TOP of the leaves in the midline crack of the leaf a week ago. There is a green shield bug shaped rapidly crawing bug with two black spots near it's middle. The spheres are about the size of a trichome spherical head..
Here is an example of how they used to clump together along a leaf spine - although they used to be more concentrated on the center line.
In the past 3-4 days their character has changed.
The white spots are now appearing sprinkled across the leaf. In 40x detail (not pictured) they appear like fuzzy white pillows instead of clear spheres. In this photo there is the same green shield bug shaped rapidly crawing bug with two black spots near it's middle. I ony saw one of these bugs wandering around. It is about half as long as a trichome stem and was ignoring the fuzzy white pillows
Spreading rapidly, this is an example of typical day 1, day2, and day 4 spread. In the top green leaf I see fuzzy white pillows.
In the middle yellow leaf I see connected white blotches, flat and not fuzzy. In the small day 4, it looks like white patches that have been eaten out of the leaves simmilar to leaf miner wounds.
This is a closeup of the day 2 flat white patches again - now accompanied by black spots - none of which seem to be moving.
I resumed spraying with 1% neem oil solution tonight. This slows but does not seem to kill the clear spheres.
Dabbing the clumps of xpheres with 100% neem oil seemed to make them die and disappear. It also did a lot of damage to the leaf where the neem oil was puddled, so I switthed to defoliating all the obviously infected leaves on 2 of the 5 infected plants.
Maybe the spray was effective against the clear spheres but I couldn't tell since they were replaced with the white fuzzy pillows.
I went back to the 1%neem oil spray just in case it helps.
- - - - Bottom Line - - - - - - -
I don't know what is going on or how to stop it from eradicating the plants in my flowering room.