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spider mites are tiny insects that feed
on the underside of plant leaves they
like lots of different things but
Tomatoes seem to be one of their
favorites in the summer in Kansas and
they actually just suck the juices out
of the plant and uh can actually cause
the leaves to die spider might leave
some fairly characteristic symptoms on
your plant so if you're going out
looking at your tomato plants or even
some other plants and you see a very
characteristic stippling on the leaves
it almost looks like someone took a
paintbrush and just kind of flung it at
the at the plant it's got tiny little
specks all over the leaves usually uh
pale yellow or white colored specks one
way to tell if you definitely have
spider mites when you see a leaf that's
got this characteristic stippling
pattern take a white or light colored
piece of paper put it under the leaf and
gently tap the leaf over the paper
after a few Taps you can take the paper
away and you'll see some tiny black or
red specks on the paper in a few seconds
those specks will start to crawl around
and that's how you know you have spider
mites those tiny specks are actually the
spider mites that have been eating your
tomato plants spider mites are one of
the most difficult insect pests to
control the reason being there really
are no good insecticides that kill
spider mites our recommendations for
spider mites usually are either a hard
stream of water if you can get a hard
stream of water and just blast the plant
it'll knock the spidermites off other
options would be insectoid soaps
Horticultural oils or neem oil for more
information visit your local extension
office or visit our spider mites
unfortunately for them to work they have
to actually come into contact with the
spidermite or the spidermite Egg so in
order to do that it's very important
that we make sure that we get our spray
on the undersides of the leaves where
most of the spider mites are actually
living and eating for more information
visit your local extension office or
visit our
website