A friend of mine gave me a beautiful, healthy pineapple sage plant that she had grown from cuttings. Within a few weeks of its arrival in my old farmhouse, some of the leaves blackened around the edges and little webs appeared between the stems and some of the leaves. I think it was spider mites. To my embarrassment, I lost the whole plant. She's given me another beautiful pineapple sage, and the process has begun again within a week of me taking it home. All of my other houseplants are fine.
My first question is where are the spider mites coming from? Do they just live in houses?
More importantly, what can I do? We're thinking of taking it outside and hosing it down to remove the mites and then planting it under row cover in our garden until June when the weather will be warmer. We could also put some ventilated plastic over it to keep things nice and warm. What do you think?
We've also read about a seaweed spray that can help with mites. I'd love to hear about anyone's experience with that.
I'd really love to have some success after the last failure and not have to confess to my friend that I've killed another one of her beautiful gifts!