I say spider you say... well what do you say? A lot of the time when spiders get mentioned on houseplant groups, the default reaction is "kill it with fire".
In On The Ledge podcast episode 269, my guest Tea Francis urges us all to to pause and think before squishing or evicting spiders that might have taken up residence on indoor plants. In fact, Tea's excellent advice on changing your mindset on spiders includes giving them a name. As she says, once you stop calling something a "creepy-crawly" and start to call it Dave or Valerie, it starts to change your attitude, too.
It's also important to differentiate between red spider mites and spiders: that way you'll save yourself a lot of time trying to eradicate a problem that isn't there. If you spot webbing around your houseplants, it may be spider silk rather than the webbing of red spider mites - which are, like spiders, classed as arachnids but they are not closely related to spiders. Get a hand lens or magnifying glass out and take a look and you should be able to spot the difference. Red spider mites look like this. Webbing only tends to occur when red spider mite infestations reach a very high level - at which point plants are usually beyond saving.
Intrigued? Need help with a spider phobia? You can listen to my interview with Tea here.
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