Foxy, I know lots of folks are sold on alcohol swabbing but try giving all of your plants that are suseptible to insects a spritz of orange oil cleaner diluted 4 to 1 with distilled water. Make sure that all the surfaces get treated. You can also soak them in a similar solution if your medium is free draining enough to dry out reasonably quickly. Bye bye buggies. I don't know if it will work for spider mites, though.
I need to do this to all of those plants out there, it's a good treatment for slugs and snails, too, if done in the evening.

Time to wage war Foxy! Don't let those little buggers take over your plant collection. The alchohol treatment works pretty well, but what would work even better on scale is a systemic insecticide such as Bonide. I think you have your plants high up enough that Fox and the others can't get to it. Hand pick all the adults off, if there aren't too many of them. Then wipe each leaf, front and back, with the alcohol. Of course, another alternative is 100% Neem oil, which I swear by. It won't harm your Philos, Pothos or Syngoniums, when used according to directions.

I hate mealy bug with the same passion. I lost my Calamondin orange tree to mealy bug this summer. All it takes is one plant death due to pests and you'll never let it happen again! I guess you could say I'm obsessed now with checking my plants for pests. I'd even go so far as to say I'm paranoid about it. LOL They seem to come out of nowhere and multiply so darned fast!

Good Luck Foxy,
GH

Hi Margaret. To be honest I don't tend to keep stuff on hand for infestations. I always loose the bottle long before I find bugs.lol I just grabbed the alcohol as a fast weapon to start my attack. I will have to look for orange oil cleaner. It sounds a lot more pleasent for the plant then alcohol.

Hey GH. War began the minute I saw the first scale.lol I have sprayed, soaped, showered, wiped with alcohol, picked the adults and pruned to make the war a little easier. I also washed the near by curtains in bleach and scrubbed all areas near the infested plants. As I'm sure you know, we have a nasty storm coming our way so I will have to continue the war with alcohol and soapy water for a while. This girl has no desire to try driving in ice even to rid my plants of pests.lol Oh and yes, the Philos are out of reach of the furbabies so if I end up using systemic insecticide the children will be safe.

Foxy.

Hi Foxy,

I totally agree with growhappy. Scale is very hard to kill with topical methods. I would definitely use a systemic of some kind.

Good luck,

Larry

Foxy, you really should try the Fish Emulsion like I mentioned a while back. Every winter this one lime tree gets mites, but not this yr..In fact, I sprayed w/FE in Oct so I'm going to do a repeat spray..What I'd do is what you're doing now, swiping them away, then spary with the FE. Do you have any on hand? Toni

Larry, for the first time I'm leaning toward trying a systemic. I fought scale only one other time...I finaly got rid of the scale, but the plant died in the process:(

Toni, I have FE around here somewhere. My concern with spraying FE on the plants is the smell. I would really hate to spray my citrus, put them back in the bed room and then find out that DH has been chased away from the smell.lol The Philos with the scale are in the kitchen...another place where nasty smells could be more disturbing to DH. Since I can't smell the FE treatment could be a bit tricky for me.

Foxy.

Foxy, do you have regular FE or the odorless type? The good news is, the smell only lasts 1-2 days..it's really not that potent, and my nose is a real scent detector.
To be honest, I'd prefer sniffing stinky, old fish manure than I would insecticides like Raid..oh that really gets to me..Yuck.
Please be careful using systemics, follow directions to a T. Even though that sometimes doesn't h elp..You already lost a plant from harsh chemicals so you know what I mean.
I too killed a nice gardenia tree in the 90's by using a strong chemical..It rid the scale but killed the plant too..I got the plant in summer so was able to keep it outdoors, (away from other plants) so I thought I'd use something stronger than normal since the plant was outside..what a joke! I tossed the insecticide away..pluck those suckers, and try going au natural..Good luck, Toni

Hey Toni! Actually the plant I lost I didn't use chemicals on. I was using alcohol. I think I lost the plant because I was moving at the time and I couldn't spend enough time picking the scale. The plant ended up suffering with the scale for too long and it was too much for the poor thing. The FE I have is the deodorized version. I have come to understand that means it is not as stinky as the full scent version.lol I guess I could put the plants somewhere else for a day or two while the odor clears away.

Foxy.

Foxy, I'd give it a try..Use 1 capful per 16oz mister of water..It's worth a try and won't kill plants..I'd also continue plucking those you see, Foxy.
Did you spray the alcohol on leaves or swipe? I think spraying would dry out leaves and kill plants. Can you place the plants you have in a cooler section of the house?
Yep, the deodorized types is less smelly as the other..Foxy, this is how I think of it..so what if we have to smell that stuff a couple days..LOL..my plants are more important than an unpleasant odor..dh and Mike complained..lol..but I've two types of FE and I used the one that wasn't deoderized..lol..Also, you can use candles, incense, air freshener to cover up the smell..Toni

Thanks for the scale-banter...I feel your pain.

I have a baby in my apartment, so I've decided to go with what seems to be the most gentle approach- Neem Oil spray.

Two questions:
Is that the most gentle+effective way to combat scales?
Do I have to remove the oil at some point so as to not suffocate the plant?

Thanks!

I was wondering the same thing as nyc_plant_guy's post directly above this message. I sprayed some scale on roses the other day with NEEM oil and it seemed like it burned the leaf tips. Most of the scale was on the bark and not the leaves but I didn't want to take a chance by not spraying the leaves and having the scale laughing at me.

Do you at some point need to rinse the plants leaves of neem oil or any oil for that matter (Sunspray ultra fine hort oil)? Thanks.

Hey Margaret

When you say "orange oil cleaner" is that something specific to plants or actually some sort of furniture cleaner?

You do not need to rinse the oils from your plants. Just follow the label directions and all should be fine. The horticultural oils are hardly 'oily', not so that you would notice.... the critters will.

The rubbing alcohol is perfectly safe to use on most plants....with NO worry of dessication or leaf damage. After all, think of how it's used (straight) on humans. Mixing up a solution of one part RA to three or four parts water and applying it with a plant mister is a very efficient method of controlling a wide variety of indoor plant pests.

Can't help with the orange oil cleaner. Seems to me that it would be ever so much more successful to use one of the wide variety of horticultural oils that are expressly made to control insects. Murphy's (so called) Oil Soaps and similiar don't have one drop of oil in them, by the way, so don't get talked into using something like that.

By the way, fish emulsion only works if it has an oil base. It is the oil that is doing the job, not anything else in the emulsion.

Pickledpeppers- I noticed that you live in Florida. Was it sunny out when you sprayed the neem? It's best to spray the neem in the very early morning or evening hours when the sun won't be shining for a while. Same goes for very hot temps. Sun and excessive heat can scorch leaves with Neem applied to it.

GH

I'm fighting scale also. I don't want to use a systemic because I have infestations on edible plants. I've been swabbing with alcohol and hand picking daily, yuck! I've been able to keep it in check this way but it's terribly time consuming and not very pleasant. The safer did absolutely nothing and the FE didn't help either. Maybe I'll try the neem oil. I hate having to bring all my plants inside for the winter. I never have bug problems outside but they never fail to show up indoors and in the greenhouse : (

I have inadvertently taken quite a different tack to fight scale. I have a badly infested birds nest fern. I put it outside on the terrace, planning to attack it with Safers Insectidal Soap. The weather got very cold, and all the leaves but one have frozen to death. At this point I am tempted to leave it out a little longer, so that all the top growth is killed by cold, and then douse it with Safers and bring it in, to see if the root/crown will regenerate.

So my question is: How well does scale tolerate frost?

Brenda