Interesting about the soybean oil. I wonder if other vegetable oils (canola?) would have the same results? I'm already thinking about how to minimize aphid damage again this year. Like Larry, home solutions will have to do it for me.

I do use Avid($240 quart) and Ovation($300 pint) for spider mites, both are pricey but last several years when mixed correctly. Being we are a commercial garden and state inspected we have little choice on what to use, we can't take a chance on shipping insects to other states. There are some Bayer products at Lowes for home gardeners that may work for you.

Have uploaded three new photos to page 1

A scape emerging in the last photo? Mine look so pathetic compared to yours .

Fred, I got the Miracle Gro in a large container - I don't have enough seedlings to warrant huge bags. I now have my seedlings outside - we were at 83 degrees today! Rain has stopped until tonight, but our freezes are over - unless we get an Easter surprise. I have put some alfalfa pellets around the seedlings - as they got rain, the pellets got soft and crumbly, now they look like they are part of the soil. Maybe its my imagination....but they are looking stouter, greener....this is the only fertilizer I have used on them. The pellets do great things for roses, and I read they were really good for daylilies too. Going to try a diluted spray of the MG on the leaves.

For aphids, I have had good luck just using that Safer spray. I think its supposed to be organic and gets rid of them.

I enclosed a photo of a seedling [Blue Pink Beauty x Fancy Border]. All this one has had in the way of fertilizer has been the alfalfa pellets. It was potted in a small pot last fall and moved up to this one later in fall. Getting ready to move it to a one gallon.

Glad to see a little sunshine, and the plants are really responding!
Judith

Nice looking seedling Judi, I just got through cleaning and fertilizing the seedling beds here and also did the second spraying for spider mites. I think the cold is over here but we have also had some weird weather around Easter, been in the 80s for several days.

I had the world's worst infestation of aphids last year. I let them get away from me. This year I just added some dish soap to water in a sprayer and inspected every day then sprayed drenching. I mashed up some garlic and added that today. I see only a few of the little buggers and have been spraying for several weeks now. Seems to work for me.

Aphids can be controlled with several home remedies but spider mites can be really destructive here, I just pay the price so I don't worry about getting them.

spunky1,
Don't think I have ever had spider mites before, but I keep reading that if the daylilies are kept watered and not allowed to dry out the spider mites will leave them alone. I know you have irrigation for your plants, so my question is (obviously watering does not stop them) but does it even slow them down or is that stuff just being repeated and is really just a bunch of hooey! For those who actually do have spider mites I think it would be good to know if they are just wasting water when trying to get rid of spider mites. I could see it might take a long period of time that a commercial grower might not be able to tolerate, but do you think it is even worth a try? How much and what kind of damage do spider mites do to daylilies and do you have any idea how long it would take them to do considerable damage?

All our daylilies are on an automatic watering system and are watered every other day so they never dry out. I don't know if water slows them down or not, I just know it doesn't prevent them. It doesn't take very long for them to destroy the foliage. Spider mites eat the foliage from the back side so by the time you notice the foliage looking ratty and dying they have moved on to a different area. They lay eggs while there feeding, so I spray three weeks in a row to make sure I get the babies that hatch. If you only have a few daylilies you may never get spider mites, if you do you might find some products at Lowes or another box store that's much cheaper than what I use.

Seedfork said:
know you have irrigation for your plants, so my question is (obviously watering does not stop them) but does it even slow them down or is that stuff just being repeated and is really just a bunch of hooey! .... How much and what kind of damage do spider mites do to daylilies and do you have any idea how long it would take them to do considerable damage?

This is from an old article:

"Mites ovipositing in a dry atmosphere lay more eggs at a higher rate and live longer than do mites ovipositing in a near saturated atmosphere. Hatching of eggs is apparently not greatly affected by extremes of humidity. Newly hatched mites survive poorly in a moist atmosphere. The results are explained on the basis of the ability to ingest larger amounts of, and to utilize more, food in a dry atmosphere through the elimination of body moisture by evaporation from the cuticle. It is suggested that spider mites may be more easily controlled in greenhouses if a high relative humidity is maintained."

From: Boudreaux, H. B. (1958). The effect of relative humidity on egg-laying, hatching, and survival in various spider mites. Journal of Insect Physiology, 2(1), 65-72.

I found a couple of other articles that seemed to contradict that but then:

"Abstract. 1. This study examines the shape of the population response curve of the two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Koch, feeding on bean plants, Phaseolus vulgaris L., which have been subjected to one of a range of drought stresses.

2. Abundance of spider mites declined at slight drought stress, increased at intermediate intensities of stress, and declined again at severe stress.

3. Fecundity showed the same pattern found for total abundance. Developmental rates of immatures, on the other hand, generally increased with stress intensity. Survivorship of immatures and adult females appeared unrelated to stress intensity.

4. These results indicate that responses of mites to drought-stressed beans are nonlinear. Such a pattern helps explain contradictory results obtained for spider mites and other arthropod herbivores."

That's from: English-Loeb, G. M. (1989). Nonlinear responses of spider mites to drought‐stressed host plants. Ecological Entomology, 14(1), 45-55.

Re damage, here are a couple of pictures. First is a comparison of leaf damage from thrips (top) to compare with spider mite damage (bottom):



This one is worse spider mite damage combined with daylily rust:

The foliage pictured on the bottom will soon turn brown die from all the mite damage.

Could be that it did, I don't remember. It was indoors (where spider mites are more of a problem) as I was trying to keep the rust going through the winter. I took the picture in 2003, according to the image info, so it has definitely turned brown and dead by now

Sorry Sue I did not know you had taken the photo so long ago.

This is the same seedling I posted on page one Mar 13 with the center growth.
The scape is now visible. These were planted Aug 2014

There are now several that can be seen.

Fred - I can not get over the clump size of these plants for being so young. Apparently, I am not fertilizing (or something) enough! They look terrific!

Thanks Becky, we had the perfect winter for the babies, I was able to push them as much as I wanted.

Have added some new photos to page 1.

I am always blown away by the size of your daylilies, Fred! Fantastic!!! I can't wait to see some blooms from all those scapes! It will look like Daylily Wonderland!

Thanks Becky, with all the rain they may not be worth looking at but should be large.