AusBonsai

Found a heap of these little mongrels on my Atlantic cedar, today. I've been lucky up until now and never had any bugs on my trees, so never really looked into the subject of pests.

So my questions are.... This is scale, right? ...and if so, what's a good method to rid my poor tree of these suckers? I've read diluted white vinegar or oil is good.

Cheers
Adrian


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Anyone with the most effective treatment of this common need conifer enemy?

Despite the clear photo I still cannot make out enough detail to confirm scale.
Scales are stuck on the leaves, twigs and sometimes trunks. They are a hard shell to protect the soft insect underneath.

Oil sprays are often recommended for scale - White oil, eco-oil, etc but read the label carefully first - some oil sprays can harm the plant when temps are warmer.
Systemic insecticides like Confidor will also control them.

You will probably need a follow up treatment as new eggs hatch.

Thumb and finger squeezing is very effective on scale, depending on size and numbers

Thanks guys, I've treated it with some Eco-oil. We'll see how it goes.


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- White oil, eco-oil, etc but read the label carefully first

Just be careful with the oils they work but suffocating the scale which also stops the plant from breathing, some plants are fine with that and some suffer


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Does pine needles have adverse reaction to a coating of oil and therefore not breathing?

http://migarden.msu.edu/uploads/files/e2812.pdf sounds ok depending on where the scale is in its lifecycle


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From looking over that first page I can see that I have the immature scale on my Atlantic cedar. Thank you for that good resource, djs. I've saved it for reading.


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So two days later after spraying the "immature hyaline (stage) scale" they basically fall or rub off with ease on my Atlantic cedar.


This is the stuff I used. They were stuck on quite well on Thursday, and as I said they seem a to be not liking their oil treatment. I'll continue to check every day, but hopefully by next weekend they'll be gone or well on the way to it. The literature supplied a few post above by djs is recommended reading material.


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