Comparatively Speaking, Sid was the Easy Target

I posted recently about my encounter with Sid the snail, our troubled breakfast, the breakdown in communications regarding the eating of the lettuce, et al. It seems he thought I said 'Sure Sid, tuck into my hard-earned salad greens, and just to get a nutritional balance make sure you take a bite out of each an every variety, even the rocket' where as what I actually said was, 'Oh no, not the freaking lettuce again, it's time Sid, oh boy it's time'. Such similar sentences I can understand why he got confused, then again he may have been slightly deafened by the greenery caught in his ears (do snails even have ears???)

The killing of Sid was difficult enough. We had bonded, albeit only momentarily, and he was rather sizeable. The death was cracklingly noisy and the evidence sat around for a while. But that death was easy compared to the battle raging on the balcony now. Remember last summer, the heatwave, the devastation. Well there was one, and only one, bonus to it; the heatwave killed all the spider mites! Yes spider mites. Other gardeners, particularly balcony gardeners know these evil little pests all too well. They hit with a vengeance last summer, and now, I am afraid they are back.

Check out the red spots on the snowpea flowers, they're red spider mites, and most of the snow peas have become infested. I love the snow peas, and they still have a few good weeks in them left before they need to be replaced by tomatoes but these spider mites are consigning them to an early death. I took to one lot of snowpeas with pestoil today, the only thing that seemed to at least slow their reproduction last time. Unfortunately, last time it also seemed to foster powdery mildew, goodness only knows how!

Does anyone else have any suggestions on how to rid the balcony garden of these evil and damaging little pests?