Today I went outside to look at my cucumber plants, and I noticed that something definitely had been chomping on it. The leaves were brown and dry and the cucumbers just weren't producing. Then on the underside I noticed a bunch of black and brown dots. This is not good. The spider mite stork made a visit and boy did he make a lot of visits. It was a full on infestation. As it gets closer to fall, the natural good bugs start to disappear and the bad bugs...aka spider mites can bloom into a major problem. How do we fix this? Well you can use an insecticide soap such as Dawn. We used a 2% ratio to water because cucumber and squash can be very sensitive to insecticide soaps. We left it on till it dried. Once its dry ...it doesn't kill anything anymore so it can be rinsed off. Don't apply during direct sunlight or on a drought affected plant. Spray once and then respray 5 days later. Their eggs hatch about every 9 days so be sure to do a spraying before then. Another natural way to control your spider mites is to use lady bugs. They can eat up to 50 mites a day. You can purchase 1500 for around $17 with shipping. You refrigerate them once they arrive and then release them at night and they will nest and then start chomping.
