Pest Fest: Get on the Scale!
Jun 15th, 2010 by Hazel
This week’s guest post comes from Amanda Thomsen, the hilariously irreverent gardener who pens Horticulture Magazine’s Kiss My Aster blog. She’s a horticulturist who has worked for more than 10 years in the industry, enjoying various titles, such as: Herb Specialist, Perennial Know-it-All, Container Queen and Landscape Designer. She’s a Master Gardener and currently works in landscaping in Chicago. Landscaper by day and blogger/podcaster by night, she’s also one half of the podcasting team on Good Enough Gardening. A little funkier and a little punkier, The Kiss My Aster Blog is the winner of the prestigious Mouse and Trowel Award for the best company blog. Follow her on twitter at @KissMyAster or join the facebook fan page
If I had to pick the best pest to get? It’d be aphids. Easy peasy to find and eliminate. Or wait, maybe slugs are easier than aphids… a bigger target, a more alcoholic bait.
Or what about galls? You just leave them alone to fester until POP GOES THE WEASEL. Nothing is easier than galls.
Whatever you get and sooner or later you’ll get something- it’s going to be better than spider mites, or heck- thrips!
Except you know what pest I wouldn’t wish on my greatest enemy? You know what is usually quite hard to notice, gross to look at when you find it, isn’t that easy to kill and likes to poop on everything?
Scale.
It’s really gross.
This scale-infested Sago Palm bit the dust after this photo was taken.
What does it look like?: There are thousands of kinds of scale, including mealybugs (yuck), but the kind I see most often look like little scabs (flat and reddish) on the undersides of leaves. Chubbier ones frequently hang out on stems and sometimes on bark. Sometimes they look like someone dribbled wax on the underside of a leaf.
What does it do?: It sucks the life out of your plants. If you have a plant that looks a little weak, check under the leaves.
What else does it do?: Well, everything that eats- eventually poops.Most scale are serious little poopers. They excrete a clear but incredibly sticky substance anywhere they hang out. You may have parked under a tree that had a bad case of scale and had this honeydew drip all over your car and you thought it was sap. Remember how hard it was to get off the windshield?
Scale fact: Scale poop is called “honeydew” for some ironic reason.
How to get rid of it?: Well, it really depends on what you’ve got it on. I like to be chemical-free so I try to go with horticultural oils, insecticidal soap and removing them by hand- with q-tips or thumb nails or lots of pruning. If you have scale on a very tall tree, it gets a little harder. You may need to resort to chemicals if your infestation get icky enough. Foliar sprays or systemics can work- but if the infestation is bad enough you may be out of luck. As with anything, make sure to read and follow the manufacturer’s instructions, even if it’s organic.
My first run-in with scale was on the job a billion years ago. They were big, fat, juicy things on a big, fat, juicy King Sago Palm. The task given to me was to dip q-tips into rubbing alcohol and swab the scale off or the option was given to me to flick them off with my thumbnail- I passed on that option. It took weeks of q-tipping, but it worked. I just lost a Sago to scale this winter, I just wasn’t willing to do the work. Keep in mind that a happy, healthy plant isn’t susceptible to pests and diseases- it’s only when they aren’t getting what they need that they become food for every tiny sucker around.
A few years later I was tasked with ridding some Euonymus coloratus of it’s habitual scale. I had to put on latex gloves and rub each leaf with horticultural oil. Yes, each leaf. It was no small task.
BTW- Euonymus has its very own scale, Euonymus scale, so I grow no Euonymus.
Now I just scratch them off with my nails- getting a red, dead scale body residue under my nails. It doesn’t bother me anymore… until I forget to wash my hands and go to eat lunch!
For more information about scale, try this.
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