I have literally taken a dustbuster to my buds to fight spider mites in the past... back in the day when I used to do garden consulting jobs and my dumb 4ss managed to bring some home from a problem garden, probably in my hair, since I always left my clothes on the front porch when I got home... this poor dude had the worst infestation I'd ever seen, and insisted that he wouldn't even consider chemical pesticides. Webs everywhere, and I had to blink a few times and pinch myself because I swore the buds were moving. I basically told him he needed to go buy a handheld vacuum cleaner, use it twice a day, crank his a/c down to 65 to slow the life cycle, set up hurricane level fans (mites hate wind), and try to limp through to harvest, and then call an exterminator to aggressively fumigate his whole house. Mites are a truly apocalyptic scourge once they are allowed to take hold.
He ended up having to move and start over.
Citric acid is pretty darn safe as pest deterrents go. And diatomaceous earth is practically inert. It's just pointy shards of the remains of marine plankton. So you can go ahead and use those safely. I also like leaf washes that contain thyme and rosemary oils, but as fogey said, if you get much on the buds it will be a very odd tasting product. A dab of the diluted stuff on a cotton ball to hit the leaf surfaces/undersides is about as far as I'd go with them at this very late stage. You're lucky they are only just now appearing and you are in a race against the clock.
