Pests in your indoor garden are bad enough – but what if you discovered that your prized vegetables, flowers and herbs were infested with pesticide-resistant “superbugs”? This sphincter-loosening prospect is an increasing possibility as a direct result of unscrupulous indoor gardeners using certain, controlled pesticides incorrectly and breeding “The Superbug.”
Warning – Incorrect Use of Some Restricted Pesticides Can Create “Superbugs”
In today’s marketplace where governments are banning hundreds of insecticides, fungicides and biocides, the consumer is now only being offered a few products that will control plant-eating insects albeit some are a lot more effective than others. Commercial growers are offered some restricted products that are not available to regular hobby growers. These restricted products are part of an IPM (Integrated Pest Management Program) and are only to be used by licensed professionals that have the appropriate application equipment and health preventative measures in place to assure them of not being poisoned in addition to the application knowledge on how to use these products properly.
Some hobby growers are managing to obtain restricted pesticides and using them in their indoor garden. The consequences are more far reaching than you might first think. It’s not just the health risk to the hobbyist grower and food consumer. Due to the grower’s lack of knowledge on how to correctly apply these licensed products according to the label’s instructions (and as part of a Total Environmental Integrated Pest Management Program), they are inadvertently creating “superbugs” – pests with increased resistance to insecticide. A few of these products are AVID ™, MONITOR™ (STINK), FLORAMITE™ and VENTEX™.
Unless you really know what you are doing with these licensed insecticides you could merely be eliminating the weakest pests and leaving, say, the strongest 0.1% to breed with each other. The result is a hardcore “superbug” that, through an accelerated process of natural selection, has an inbuilt resistance to the original pesticide product.
The worst superbug of them all? You guessed it –the spider mite. These are the insect pests that invariably create the most damage in indoor gardens. Currently in California there is much talk among indoor gardeners about the infamous “Mendo Mite” – a super breed of spider mite that is believed to have originated in Mendocino County which has vastly increased resistance to pesticides.
In Canada there are no registered bio-pesticides to kill spider mites – as these are new products that do not have enough trial studies undertaken to complete an application proving efficacy, toxicity and several other criteria that are demanded by Health Canada.
Safer Alternatives
Neem oil is a good deterrent but will not kill spider mites. Neem oil works primarily as a systemic. A systemic pesticide is watered into the root base or applied through a foliar spray. Once the physical properties of the neem oil have been absorbed into the vascular structure of the plant (10-14 days after application) the taste of the foliage is not attractive to the spider mites so they will go elsewhere for their food. The other benefit of neem oil is it will make a lot of leaf-eating insect’s molt. Molting in layman terms is a vasectomy. The adult insects that ingest foliage treated with neem oil will be incapable of laying eggs thus eventually reducing the population of the spider mites.
The immediate drawback to using neem oil is the time delay before it becomes effective. If you discover an infestation today it will not help you through this crucial elimination period. In addition it can impart flavors to your crops. Foliar applications of neem oil also clog stomata (the “breathing part of a plant’s leaves) which slows photosynthesis resulting in late harvests. Overall neem oil is a good addition to most gardens but you may consider discontinuing its use at the early stages of the flowering cycle.
Insecticidal soaps are simply soaps that, if used on a strict daily basis, may give you some results. However, these new superbugs are pretty tough and may show a lot of resilience to insecticidal soap application. The other drawback of insecticidal soaps is that they cause phyto-toxicity (damage to plant tissue) and that they do not kill insects on contact. A thorough application is always required in order to be effective – so much that it is running off the plant – then it drowns the insect but secondly causes clogged stomata in a similar manner to neem oil, thus delaying the harvest.
Pyrethrums are a botanical extract and the most effective measure to eliminate spider mites quickly. Pyrethrum is available in a couple formats – as a dust or an aerosol spray – cans or plastic pump spray bottles. Due to pyrethrums decomposing rapidly in humid, high temperatures and windy areas the powder is the least effective as it is a contact application only and dusting a plant on all sides is not that easy as you are working against gravity from the onset! And experienced growers all know that most spider mites (super or otherwise!) will be found on the underside of foliage – the powder simply will not reach or stick.
Most indoor gardeners agree that pyrethrum aerosol sprays are the most effective. Using pyrethrum gives you immediate results – instantly killing every insect that it contacts. The drawback is that, as an evolutionary defense, when spider mites smell pyrethrum they lay eggs as they know they are going to die.
Pyrethrum used once every three to four days for four consecutive applications will result in eliminating the lifecycles of the spider mites and will eradicate them completely from your garden.
Have you been hit by the “Mendo Mite” or with any other “superbug” that appears to have increased resistance to pesticides? Tell us about it below!
guess u folks didn’t get the memo….
If u mix in alcohol to a 50% solution to your maxi/neem solution it will take those f** ers
out ….organically…..I am thinking of mites but try it on others…..some types of plants do not like it so test first…..for super organic folks …try triple distilled vodka full strength….also full strength can be used as a surface rub….alcohol alone can be used anytime in the cycle…..this free message is brought to u by …… grovert58@yahoo.com
Neem does not clog spomata, that is absolutely an incorrect statement.
neem does not affect flavor of fruit.
Neem kills squash beetles and spider mites will be gone fairly quickly but it will not affect a vine once bored.
IMPORTANT: only use 100% neem (not a mix with neem), this has the highest ppm and you can mix it with soap nut powder or a natural dish soap, we use soap nut powder.
Other neem products oil is extracted with solvents and affect the quality of the neem. If you are organic this should be a big deal.
If yu use neem cake in the soil and apply neem in a spray every five days you will not have a lot of the problems discussed here.
The Superbug claim is dubious on many many levels. Organics or botanical insect control companies would like everyone to think using FloraMite or Avid is “just irresponsible” – however evidence is somewhat contrary to this conclusion.
Pesticide-resistant spider mites have been around for over 60yrs, and numerous studies have been done since then to determine the mechanism that causes resistance, as well as approaches to deal with resistant mites. Home growers are not the scourge of the world, mutating insects – at the least, there is a history of companies harboring resistant mites and transferring them with plant specie, and no history of home growers (presumably the outdoor growers in Mendocino) being the source of known resistant mite strains. (Can someone provide a research paper if I am incorrect?)
There is however evidence that the simple use of pesticides – restricted or botanical – can lead to populations of insects forming resistances. Since various pests will often be affected by a single pesticide, and the dosage-determined efficacy will vary among insect species, it is possible to target one pest with an appropriate dose of a specific insecticide, that is not quite enough to kill another target specie, but appropriate for it to form a resistance.
Then there are the cases where doses are hypothetically appropriate for target species, but individuals within the targeted specie form resistances anyway.
From the University of Cali:
“When we spray, we kill a large portion of the pest population, but at the same time we select for survivor insects with genes for resistance. Genetics for resistance can be manifested in a variety of ways. The most common resistance mechanism provides the insect with specialized enzymes that break the pesticide down into less-toxic chemicals.” (Publication 8033, U.C. 2001)
Pyrethrins (compounds of Pyrethrum which have insecticidal properties), which are the active ingredient in many popular “botanical” insecticides, are neurotoxins which can be detoxified in insects by the enzyme Cytochrome P450. It is logical therefor that Pyrethrins have an equal capacity to promote resistant mites, or become resisted by mites, since the known causes of insect resistance to pesticides apply to Pyrethrins – one of which is the insects capacity to detoxify the compound with enzymes.
To add to it, once the spider mites have become resistant to Pyrethrins, or another insecticide, the most suitable approach to control the now-resistant populations of mite would be a sure-fire miticide such as FloraMite. If a pyrethrins-resistant mite is not dealt with accordingly, with such “harsh measures”, they can spread to other environments and become an even greater nuisance.
Hobbyist growers are often not the most educated. Restricting pesticides such as Avid (aka Abamectin, which is a natural fermentation product of Streptomyces avermitilis) has removed the single guideline they could use to protect themselves when they are seeking to rid themselves of the menacing mite – the label. Restricted pesticides are often sold repackaged into an affordable volume, without labels, with word-of-mouth instructions on dilution, and nothing to warn them of the toxicological dangers. In my experience, people still use restricted insecticides, but with less information about them.
In my opinion, home growers are probably not the cause of super-mites, restricted insecticides are not super-mite agents simply because they are restricted, botanical insecticides are not better because they are botanical, and just because a dozen grow forums swear by something does not make it true.
If you want to avoid resistant mites, use a variety of insecticides, intermittently rotating them; whether they are botanical, domestic-use chemical insecticides, or restricted.
On a side note regarding Neem “not killing spider mites” – studies have shown a 40% mortality rate with a treatment of Neem, compared to <10% in control mortality (Cote et al. 2002).
In another study of the active ingredient Azadirachtin, 80 ppm of the compound caused a reduction of 50% in survival to adult stage (Elena Martínez-Villar et al. 2005).
To quote the study cited above, "The net reproductive rate (R 0), the intrinsic rate of increase (r m), and the finite rate of increase (lambda) of treated females were lower. Treatment showed a negative value of r m, resulting in a declining population. These results suggest that azadirachtin could be incorporated in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programmes of T. urticae [two-spotted spider mite]."