Could this be the work of spider mites?
I’m very new to plants (started in April) so I don’t know what this could be. I have what looks like very fine spider webs between the leaves and the stem on my ficus elastica and gold dust croton. I can only see them when I mist my plants. What we currently see in the webs are water droplets. I can’t see anything that resembles bugs and they look quite healthy otherwise but those webs have to come from somewhere?
I isolated my plants from the others, wiped everything down with a wet paper towel and a drop of blue dish soap. What else should I do? I have neem oil, could that be helpful?
by Imaginary_Leg_425
5 Comments
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Yup, looks like it.
Get a soft make up brush, water/soap/alcohol mixture (I’d go 1 part 96% alcohol, 2 parts water and a tsp of bronners menthol soap) and get to brushing.
I personally spray the plant, brush gently with the veins of the leaf (don’t forget the petiole and sinus), do the underside of the leaf and spray the leaf again.
Do this for the whole plant, get all the nooks and crannies.
The webs are hydrophobic, so that’s why just spraying doesn’t work. You need to disturb to webs to get them off.
I generally always just have to do this once.
I went through this recently. I used a mix of neem oil, Castile soap, and lukewarm water. Mix it in a spray bottle and spray it on the plant. Use a tooth brush or something similar to spread the mix across the plant. Make sure to get both sides of the leaf to get full coverage. Key is to repeat again in a week for any eggs that may hatch afterwards
I wouldn’t use neem oil on ficus leaves. If you can’t spray it with a systemic insecticide, buy some slow release insecticide sticks. The plant will be protected from inside.
I had this on a pretty similar plant to yours last year – it did either end up genuinely being cobwebs, or the problem fixed itself…..
Yours definitely looks like it has some little dudes in it, mine definitely didn’t…
But the formation of the webs was the same