The problem: Everyone wants to know “how to kill” various predators like spider mites. If you’ve started at least dabbling in permaculture, you know the food web and how everything has a role—even pests like these. The best approach is almost always to find another way—after all, something eats those spider mites, and it’s also part of the food web.
The solution I’ve heard about: If you can use a light touch and leave them be as much as possible while building your soil and ecosystem, predators will discover them and balance their numbers out. In fact, I’ve read that often it’s just a matter of seasonality: One year’s weather will be balanced by the next, and the insects that thrive this year may be overrun and/or balanced out by all the predator larvae that hatch next spring, etc.
NEW problem: Like soil science, it’s incredibly complicated to understand how these processes of predation, life cycle, soil deficiencies, and balance all line up. Basically, I can’t find any credible sources or methods to accompany the “let it be” method of pest management. If I want to let the spider mites be (and I do!), is there any kind of method or protocol I can follow other than inaction? No matter how hard I look, all I can find are anecdotes, like: “I just let them alone, and next year there weren’t as many.” That’s all well and good—and there’s nothing wrong with learning from the shared experiences of others—but it’s not reproducible (everyone’s situation is different) or verifiable. Has anyone here found non-anecdotal methodology for letting pests do their thing and building the ecosystem around them to bring balance? General guidance that goes beyond simple inaction?
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