Today's garden crawl

[HAB911]

turned up a pest on the Fig. What I thought might be someone's eggs, turned out to be the actual animal, sucking the life force out of my fig. Fig wax scale, Ceroplastes rusci, invasive sap-sucking pest that covers itself in a hard, pinkish-gray to white waxy layer. It feeds on the phloem of fig. Like aphids, they excrete "honeydew" that ants love. As soon as the temp drops below 100 removal must begin!

[George McGovern]

1. Ugly little suckers. I hope you wipe them out.

[HAB911]

5. I thought I had barnacles!

[Walleye]

2. Well, that's pretty interesting. I've never seen them. I don't know that we have them here.

[HAB911]

3. Made me look

"primarily established in Florida, United States, and has also been reported in various regions worldwide, including the Mediterranean area and parts of South America" first discovered in the mid-1990s

almost everything here is from somewhere else

[George McGovern]

4. Kinda like Kalifornia . . .

[Easterncedar]

6. Ugh! I used to fight magnolia scale by hand in a plant nursery

After an hour of wiping them off, their weird cloying sweet smell would have me gagging.

The alternative, pesticide, would have killed the wasps and lady bugs that were all over helping.

[HAB911]

7. that smell does get old real quick

I'll have to do this by hand, I'm afraid that waxy shell would protect them and I have seen some lady bugs around my grape vines which have some aphids, so no spraying for me

[Easterncedar]

8. Good luck

Scale is very hard to eliminate. Let us know how you fare, please.

I have had some success with an organic soapy spray on my potted bay ‘tree’, a plant I inherited 25 years ago and really cherish. It picked up scale from a stephanotis I bought at a grocery store florist. After 4 years of fighting, including radical pruning, and removing the soil and washing the roots and repotting, the bay is holding on, but I don’t think it will ever be completely safe from outbreaks. The scale is very good at hiding and lying in wait.

[HAB911]

9. I took a tray with me to catch the remains

and began removing by hand, but saw that it was very localized on just a few small branches, so I pruned those and put them in the trash. Now I just have to take a look every day. This is the first year it is absolutely loaded with figs. We had a really cold winter with an extended multi-day freeze and it seems to have been invigorated by it and not damaged. Same for the mulberry which is having a second harvest.