Why I Oughta...

Over the past few weeks, I've made mention of a challenging infestation of Spider Mites that have come to take over a good swath of the dahlias in the sideyard.  Despite treating them multiple ways, they seemed to stick around and continue to attack the plants. I started by spraying everything with my normal miticide - Bifenthrin.  That has (historically) done the trick.  But, either the Spider Mites are immune to it, or I wasn't mixing it strong enough.  Because, they not only survived, they seemed to grow.  And take over more plants.  I did all the non-synthentic things, too.  Like...giving the plants a STRONG spray of water to knock the mites off.  And, I went for two-plus weeks with a heavy-hand of Neem Oil concentrate.  I sprayed the tops of the leaves.  I sprayed the bottoms of the leaves.  I sprayed the stems.  I sprayed the soil.  I sprayed the blooms.   Nothing would stop these freaking Spider mite...

I walked out to the back and noticed that one of our dahlia plants is in RAPID DECLINE.  I mean...rapid.  It went from (I'm pretty sure) totally healthy what you see in the photo below overnight.  It is wilted with very little rigidity in the plant everywhere.   This happened before in this bed, but the dahlia recovered very quickly.  What I figured out (then) was that the poor soil conditions (this is a ton of clay) along with a period of heavy rain caused the tubers to drown and become overwatered.  Is that what is happening here? Or is it a pest issue like spider mites?   Or, something else.  Like a disease? I'm treating this two ways (right now). First...I dug up some of the soil around the tuber to try to help dry out the clay and let the tuber breath a little bit.  See below: Second, I'm seeing some tiny webbing (and what I think are Spider Mites) near the top of the plant.  So, I've applied a heavy dose of mite-icide to ...