Quick, dirty, and harmless to the roses.

Bop those babies outside. Let the rain spray them with water. One of the reasons you are seeing the spider mites early inside is because it's been reasonably warm. Use that instead of fighting it.

Nothing, but nothing kills spider mites in my experience as fast as warm snow.

It helps to understand that the old instructions to bring plants in when it freezes wasn't based on the plants, but on freezes cracking clay pots. Once you get past that, and into the temperature limits of the plants themselves, frost is rarely an issue. However, there are a fair number of pests that frost slows down, so my first crack at pest control is to leave potted plants out until fairly close to the plants cold limit.

They showed up on one of my indoor roses about 10 days ago. Watering overhead daily + spraying a single application of horticultural oil seems to have helped - I have not seen additional signs. I'm not sure if hort. oil is OK for seedlings, tho.

Cheers,
Michelle

Repeated sprays of soapy water helps. Do not use harsh liquid soap with degreasers or antibiotics. A teaspoon per gallon should work. Mist one day with soapy water, mist with water the next couple of days (resuds it) and soapy water again and so on until they are gone. It takes commitment and persistence and would be very difficult to totally get rid of them. I am very very very careful to make sure I am spidermite free before I start my new rose seedlings inside. I take minimal plant material inside over winter, spray well outside before I bring them in with standard insecticides and miticides and use the soap inside. About half the time I am spidermite free all winter and otherwise I have to keep knocking them back until I can get the plants outside in spring. It is a harder and harder battle as I get more plants and more leaf material to spray.

David

Never thought about putting them out side...I swear I just brought the last of the plants IN! Since we are supposed to have a really nice week here...again...I will do just that, and then when I HAVE to bring them back in again, I can use David's soap idea.

Thanks guys!

Gerry

I use my grandmother's old remedy for preventing spidermites.She would dip her plants(stem and leaves only)in a gallon of water with a cup of vinegar.She would swish them around for a few minutes.Then she brought them in.Some of my pots are too heavy to do this.So, I spray them well and blot the leaves lightly with news paper before bringing them in.
michelle