Tiny white mites in the soil?

[ClosetClouds]

Topped this guy this morning, and touched the soil for a few seconds, when I picked my hand up, there were teeny, tiny, barely noticeable bugs crawling on my hands — one just crawled across my phone screen as I typed that, no joke - but there does seem to be a fair amount of them in the soil. They’re white, and just crawling around the soil. I have sticky traps, is there any kind of safe treatment I can use that is organic to kill these bugs or should I let them be and set up sticky traps?

thank you!

 

[Homesteader]

Probably just eating soil organic matter. Soil can contain many types of mites but most wont harm your plants and in fact most are needed to break down organic nutrients.

 

[TomH]

Probably just eating soil organic matter. Soil can contain many types of mites but most wont harm your plants and in fact most are needed to break down organic nutrients.

Thank you for this information, I had been noticing the same in my brand new soil and wondering what the heck was going on.

 

[Homesteader]

Some quality soil companies will use small amounts of beneficial mites eggs to fight fungus gnat larvae in their mixes. Typically if they crawl fast around the soil, they are searching for smaller critters to eat. Root aphids do have a phase that they look whitish but they typically are surrounding the root stalk and they all have the typical aphid look.