Hello!
I recently started my first garden bed and everything has been growing beautifully! I live in NSW Australia and it is currently Spring here.
I have been noticing insect life in the garden. Ants, little flies, worms and garden spiders. All was fine until I spotted hundreds of microscopic orange-ish spider looking things crawling all over my soil and mulch. I took a further look with the zoom on my phone camera and found that the bigger ones are orange and the almost unseeable ones are clear.
I did a lot of reading on mites yesterday and it seems that the most common pest mite is the Two Spotted Mite (Red Spider Mite). My little friends don't have two spots on the back however, I read they can turn red-orange during cooler weather and seeing as we are just coming out of winter, I'm concerned that this might be the case. I have also been noticing small-ish webs on the soil. I'll add photos below. My plants seem to be doing fine. One of my green bean leaves was eaten but it has slime all over it so I'm guessing a snail made his way through.
This has me confused and worried because I can't tell if they are Predatory Mites (Persimilis), Pest Mites, or maybe even just baby spiders from my Garden Spiders!! I have already become emotionally attached to my veggies and I would be devastated if they got eaten up by some tiny pests!
I also found a few of these small caterpillar- larva looking things if you can identify. Hopefully not a problem.
Please help to identify and if they are pests, any advice on how to organically deal with them would be much appreciated.
Unfortunately the photos have not come through. Please can you resend them.
The predatory mites are a uniform orange colour. The red spider mite is a similar size with the two dark spots (feeding sacs) on either side. The spider mite do change colour in winter but tend to congregate in protective areas during the colder months so I would not expect to see them over the leaves in winter.
Treatment of mites - remove all the badly affected plant material, remove all the weeds as they can be an alternative host for spider mite. Water over head - mites prefer dry conditions and their reproduction cycle slows in wet conditions. You can purchase Predatory Mites from Bugs for Bugs, they come as strips with eggs attached ready to place in your garden. These are used successfully throughout Australia. For these to be successful there need to be sufficient red spider mites for the predatory mite to eat - not enough and the predatory mites will die before the new mites emerge.
Treatment of caterpillars. For caterpillars that are not hairy the best option is Dipel. It is made bacteria found naturally in the soil. It affects the caterpillar's digestive system and is harmless to all other insects and animals https://www.gardensonline.com.au/Shopping/GardenShop/Show_6536.aspx
Snails and slugs are difficult to control, people have tried all kinds of remedies with various levels of success, egg shells, coffee grinds, bowls containing beer or sugary water, collecting the snails at night. There are various snail baits that can be used. Multiguard, which unfortunately we don't sell, seems to be the most pet and child friendly.