AusBonsai

Hello, newbie here...

Recently was given a beautiful 5 year old chinese elm to start my first bonsai. When it was given to me it had a lot of ants on it. I've now noticed that it seems to have Scale, particularly concentrated around the soil and trunk. I squashed as many as I could - just wondering what is the best way to treat scale on a Chinese Elm? And what about mealy bug? I did see the tiniest evidence of what I think is mealy bug, (cottony concentrations and small white/grey/yellow bugs). From my reading I can see that the ants are probably helping out the scale... grrrrrrr.

I have just given her a pretty hard prune... is it ok to treat the tree straight after cutting or do i need to wait a while?

All your advice is much appreciated.

Renae

Hi Renae and welcome ! You can treat both with white oil - but you may want to wait until it stops raining. I never get scale on my elms - only usually on my figs

Do you think it will stop raining?
I was asked if we needed sandbags in case the water crossed the road!!
If I did you would be in a real wet patch.
Happy bonsai,
Bruce.

In your spare time you can start on an ark Bruce

Bougy Fan wrote:Hi Renae and welcome ! You can treat both with white oil - but you may want to wait until it stops raining. I never get scale on my elms - only usually on my figs

Thanks Tony. I am fairly certain the little critters are scale... like a minature armadillo fella! Hanging about on the trunk and getting under the bark...

Cheers for the advice... Hopefully if the rain doesn't wash the bonsai away I'll hit it with some white oil soon.

Thankyou again.

Yes it is most likely scale - the ants are a give away. Wherever there are ants you can usually look for scale - they secrete a sweet sticky substance that the ants eat. If you see them on a fig look under the leaves - scale seems to like hiding under there.

As long as the bonsai has good free draining mix it will be fine in the rain. You should think about joining a club too

I'm not sure of this diagnosis. As Tony says, scale is not common on Chinese elms and is more often on the leaves, not the bark. Armadillo is not quite the description I would give of scale either

A picture would help give a more accurate diagnosis Check12. It could be something else on your tree????

Like Armardillos? You don't mean these?

http://www.ento.csiro.au/education/allies/isopoda.html

Cheers,
Mojo