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I have a basil plant. White tiny spots have started to appear on its leaves. On top of the leaves, there are also small reddish moving dots that appear to me as insects.
Does anyone know what are these tiny reddish brown insects? Are these really insects? They have super tiny legs and looks like they can form weblike white thing on the leaves.
Looks like a large number of spider mites. There are the whitish egg cases and webs but I have not seen red spider mites before.
If you want to harvest the basil you cannot use pesticides so 5 ml soap to 1 liter of water will control them. Just soak a cloth in the solution and wipe down everything. Repeat at six day intervals at least twice.
This could be predator spider mites check the link below and to see if it has the same characteristic.
However with this large amount of damage its most probably adult spider mites. I would bag the whole infested section of the plant and snip it or just start fresh.
See this link for more details.
