by Tony
Strawberry 5 Month Update-Spidermites & other bugs
11:54 am in Completed Window Farms, posts with pitcures! by Tony
Here we are at 5 months since building my window farm and want to give a general update. Strawberries are growing well and have been flowering and fruiting. The plants are growing in rockwell cubes and lately I have the airpump timer running three times a day for about 3hours at a time. The rockwool holds alot of moisture. I have a small fan that runs when the airpump runs to help with pollination. I had tried hand pollinating for awhile, but I do not want to spend the time.
This last month (July) I have been having bug problems and want to get peoples opinions on how to solve them. The first I believe are spidermites. I can see the little white bugs and the little webs on the leaves. All I have been doing to control them is to take the plants outside and hose the leaves and roots off. However, a few weeks later they are back.
The second are little white larvae like bugs (1-2 mm long) that I see floating in the resevoir and have seen them on the roots. The photo below shows them and am not sure if they are related to the mites. They apeared around the same time, but I think they are unrelated. Maybe they are coming in with the rain water I am using. I clean and refill the resevoir once a week and they still show up.
In one of the bottles, I had made a simple net cup out of a yogart cup with holes drilled in it. I think the cup is too small for the strawberries. The roots have grown out of the cup and circle in the bottle cap below.
In the other two bottles, I have regular net cups which are much larger than the yogart cup and the roots have never ventured beyond the cup itself.
Hi there – your plants look nice and healthy, good job.
Get some Neem, take your plants outside, and give them a good spray.
Then put a teaspoon full of Neem into a tea filter, put it into the reservoir for a few hours, and see what happens there.
I’ve had four quiet weeks almost without a single bug after I first tried Neem in my reservoir – my butterwort is already complaining
a little bit of Bacillus Thuringiensis bacteria in your reservoir will get rid of all those larvae
there are many advantages to rockwool but one disadvantage is that it sort of acts like a sponge it soaks water in then it doesn’t allow for much oxygen to get to the roots. anaerobic bacteria develops on the roots, which is the brown slimy stuff you feel when you touch them. try running the system on a timer.
Hm, I don’t think that brown slime is bacteria. It appears to be brown algae, which is a bunch of microorganisms called diatoms, a type of phytoplankton. The will consume the plant nutrients (not much though), but more importantly they could clog up the pores in the rockwool and they will compete with the root system for oxygen. Since you take such good care of your plants, I would suggest purchasing an inexpensive bottle of hydrogen peroxide (make sure it’s the clear stuff) and simply fill a small container with it and soak the rockwool in there for 5 minutes every few days. A timer can help by allowing the rockwool to dry out, which will allow more than enough oxygen to the root system, assuming they haven’t gunked it up too bad.
@samenrahmen Thanks for the tip. I don’t know anything about Neem. Is the neem you put in the tea filter the leaves of the plant itself or a purchased product? If you could please explain a little more that would be great.
Just to give everyone an update. I have not tried anyones suggestions just yet. I still have the little critters. I am still changing the resevoir weekly so the larvea in there can’t develope into anything. I am still spraying the the leaves every few weeks with the garden hose to keep the spidermites away, but they keep reappearing. Winter is coming soon and this option is not going to be as easy. I was wondering if I sprayed them off often enough if I could break their life cycle.
Hi,
you can purchase crushed Neem seeds, which is what I used.
Put a teaspoon full into the reservoir and leave it there over night.
Then:
Soak about two teaspoons of Neem in two or three cups of water over night, add a a squirt of dish liquid,
shake, and then thoroughly spray the leaves with it, especially the undersides (best done outside).
You may have to repeat this procedure a few times, but unlike the water treatment this will destroy the spider mites.
The hardcore version also includes canola oil, but you may want to try this one before going into that …
It has been 3 weeks and no sign of the spidermites. I had just been washing the leaves off with water whenever I saw any sign of them. It’s been 4 months since they appeared. I would like to think that this solved the problem, but the changing of the seasons could have helped as well I suppose.