Field Notes

A connected troubleshooting path from live thrips counts to coverage, conditions, prey stages, and a better repeat-treatment plan.

Why sheltered placement and plant coverage affect cucumeris sachets, and how to use those lessons in a prevention program.

The soil mite you buy for fungus gnats has been sold under another species' name for fifty years, and it's credited with a prey list the science only partly supports. Here's what it is, what it eats, where it lives in the pot, and which claims on the label survive contact with the studies.

Soil mites are sold by the thousand and applied by the tablespoon, which makes it hard to know whether you've used enough. Here's where the numbers come from, how they convert into pots, and what the first month should look like on a sticky card.

Almost every "the mites didn't work" story traces back to one of nine causes, and most of them were decided before the bottle was opened. Here's each failure mode, the mechanism behind it, and the fingerprint that tells them apart.

No published trial has ever put predatory mites, beneficial nematodes, rove beetles and Bti head to head under one protocol. What exists is a set of single-agent results answering different questions — how fast, how long, which life stages, and which of them eat each other.

Soil isn't a material a predator moves through. It's a three-dimensional maze of pores, films and dead ends, and the size of those pores decides who hunts where. This is the physics underneath every soil biocontrol instruction you've ever been given.

Predatory mites have been managing pest populations in orchards and gardens for decades — the outdoor track record is solid. The approach is just different than indoor. Here's which species handle real outdoor conditions, when to release for the season, and why suppression is the goal that actually keeps your plants healthy.

Most growers release predatory mites with a vague goal of "getting rid of the pests." But eradication and ongoing protection are different strategies, requiring different species, different formats, and different expectations. One is a campaign with an end. The other is a programme that runs alongside your plants. Here's how to know which one you're actually running — and how to make it work.

The honest answer is: it depends. Predatory mites work exceptionally well under the right conditions — and fail predictably under the wrong ones. Here's how to know which situation you're in before you spend anything.

Predatory mites are the biological control solution to spider mites, thrips, broad mites, fungus gnats, and more — and they don't harm plants, people, or pets. If someone has suggested you add more mites to fix your mite problem, this is the article that explains why that's actually correct.