Scale, generally, are best controlled by spraying the affected plants with horticultural oils. Although I have found some information about using Neem Oil products for scale control that is mostly from people selling Neem Oil products. One of those sources recommends mixing 1 teaspoon of pure Neem Oil in 1 quart of water with 1 teaspoon if soap added.

Here is a link that might be useful: Control of scale

yes spray with white oil, make your own see recipe on our remedies page.

the ants bring them, symbiotic relationship, look for the ants and move them on.

teh scale will secret sugary substance the ants use for food, which in turn will create sooty mold, but at the end of the day apart from looking a little unsightly will not damage fruit quality or the tree, long term.

sooner or later the ants may move on and the scale will die off. we have seedling citrus here with a lot of soot on it, it is doing ok.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Len, some of your statements are not very factual. Scale insects are not an ant created problem, though ants are likely to take advantage of their sweet excretions. Some scale do not even produce honey dew. Getting rid of the ants will never be a solution for a scale infestation.

It's important to control scale insects.....they can contribute to a plant's decline. So can black sooty mold, when it is allowed to accumulate to the point when it inhibits efficient photosynthesis.

I took a look at your remedies page. Your white oil recipe calls for one CUP of vegetable oil, one and a half cups of water, and a bit of dish soap.

I think that you should perfect your own concoctions, test them for efficacy (have your friends do it) and safety, and post them. Leave out the outsider suggestions (like grits for ants) . And suggesting a mixture that is pretty much half water and half oil seems......

I'm a big fan of yours and applaude your work and work ethic. But not a fan of the remedies page. :-(

whatever rhizo,

so how do the scale get from wherever to infest a new plant, how do they get from the same wherever to infest a young plant in the bush? come on you have all the answers?

did you read the top lines on the page, the greatest majority of those tips came from yank gardeners.

anyway back to this scale which you seem to be saying crawls along the ground or under the ground, or randomly blows in on the wind, and happens to lob on fireweeds citrus, no other plant just the citrus.

and of course you go against your own sciences by saying there is no symbiotic relation ship going on.

and i di say apart from being a tad unsightly it won't really affect the bush or quality of the fruit.

never seen sooty mould adversely effect any plant i've seen it on, like i said before you went off 1/2 cocked i have a young citrus seedling nearly full of it and still growing. also lots of ant activity as we are in early drought again, when rain comes teh ants most likely will move on.

len

Most egg hatched scale are born in soil or plant litter and move to plants...or are wind blown to plants. Only the males have wings and most don't live long...most females asexually reproduce. They don't rely on other insects to move themselves to plants...they are capable of doing it quite well (and quite undetected) in their very early nymph stages. They are very tiny in their initial nymph stages.

Ants don't tend to "farm" scale onto plants...though I guess it could be done, I've never seen it. Nymph scale make young aphids look like elephants compared to a dog.

Ants tend to show up after the scale arrive, not bring the scale.

Once well established, scale can be pretty difficult to eradicate and citrus tends to be rather prone to the problem.

If the tree is small enough to manage, wiping down the leaves and stems with a rag soaked in rubbing alcohol can eliminate a lot of the pests. Continuing treatment with either horticultural oil or neem oil is recommended - both are considered organic controls. And neem oil can work just as effectively as horticultural oil - the word "oil" in the name is the big clue :-) It is the slick, adhering nature of the substance that is what is effective as it blocks air holes, resulting in suffocation.

I agree that there is little - if any - relationship of ants "farming" or otherwise cultivating scale. They generally appear after the fact, if at all. Oddly enough, scale is very common on even indoor citrus that have no real exposure to other plants or wind, leading to the assumption that contamination is via the soil or that eggs/larvae are picked up just by proximity at the growers.

And if sooty mold (the black substance that grows on the excreted honeydew) is heavy enough, it can alter the plant's ability to photosynthesize. So yes, it can kill a plant if left unattended.