Yeah, I meant “no such thing as overkill” as far as knocking them back far enough to be able to control them (relatively) easily with food-crop-safe/eco-friendly options.
Back when I was growing orchids (before I moved to a much less-well-lit apartment), I found Enstar II relatively effective. That’s basically non-toxic to mammals, at least in the amounts one is exposed to with normal use, but as I recall, it’s not labeled for food crops at all. (Iirc, it’s also toxic to fish, so using it in garden-size quantities outdoors can be potentially problematic. And I have no idea what it’s half-life is or what it breaks down into.) There are also other “high tech” miticides, and probably newer ones I’m unaware of, but they’re (a) very expensive (and usually sold only in large-scale commercial quantities, to boot), and (b) mostly developed for, and presumably labeled only for, ornamentals.
You probably do have naturally-occurring predatory mites, they tend to co-exist with other species. The main problem is that they’re more sensitive to heat and dryness (especially dryness) than the plant eating sort, so they’re more prone to “boom and bust” cycles. I don’t know, what, if anything, you can do to help maintain a healthy local predatory mite population (apart from limiting overall pesticide use), but you might be able to find some useful info about that on organic/IPM-oriented websites.
