Light in the last week of flowering and spider mites

[coroj]

How crucial is the light in the last week of flowering?

I'm going to harvest in five or six days and I'm having troubles with spider mites. I saw three buds surrounder of webs three days ago and quite a lot of spider mites moving really fast. The room was arround 76 - 80 F, so I dimmed the light in order to keep the room below 67 F and cut the buds and leaves with webs.

95% of spider mites are not moving at all. I don't think spider mites are going to damage the buds (more than they are now) in five days more as long as the room is cold...
However, if light is a crucial factor at the end of flowering I just could stop dimming the lights and harvest the areas as soon as the spider mite popullation increases their activity. (Unfortunatelly, it's a messy scrog in a small place, so it's quite hard to work and it's impossible to move the plants somewhere else).

 

[Lester Beans]

You can use a vaccum cleaner to remove as many mites as possible.

The dimmed light is fine, kind of like fall.

Or harvest them now before the mites wrap up more buds. Get that vaccum out!

And make sure to clean really well after this run and take precautions in the future not to go down the mite road again.

Best of luck!

 

[rykus]

+1 on the vacuumed webs! Lower light is good and even without mites I like lower intensity and temps, makes nicer product IMO, size is already established and finishing vigor is determined by health rather than light intensity.

 

[Mikell]

Destroying webs is a great idea. It forces the mites to stop feeding/reproducing and focus on rebuilding.

Controlling temps is a good start. I'd spray clean water myself or just make extracts. No one likes Rice Krispies.

 

[coroj]

Thanks for the tips. I'll keep the light dimmed and the temperature low then. I'm going to try removing the few webs there are on the leaves with the vacuum cleaner when the lights turn on.

I panicked when I saw the webs and a lot of small yellowish mites going crazy back and forth. There weren't that many mites, though. Actually, I'm drying the buds and they look completely ok. You need to watch really carefully in order to notice that the buds were under attack.

 

[Mikell]

Might be too late for this but if you hang branches they'll all run to the top. Wipe, wait and repeat. It won't give you grade A smoke but removes a lot.

 

[Boyd Crowder]

power wash and ultimate wash are two brands that will wipe them out and wont leave any residues - they are strictly ionized water.
but with a few days left ,the vacuum , hand cleaning and a good regular water bath will get most of it under control before the harvest