Trust me, I have the same problem with a ton of my plants, fortuanely not my sago, but they can be treated the same way.

As long as its not a heavy infestation, you can just get some rubbing alcohol and put it on a paper towel and clean the plant. My ponytail palm has scale and all the areas I cleaned with rubbing alcohol no longer has any probelms (just some scars from all the juce the scale sucked out. My coconut started getting some scale too, but I cleaned the plant with rubbing alcohol and it came right off.

Good luck!

Also if its a bad infestation, the spraying of horticuture oils might work. Its should kill them as soon as the oil dries, and all you have to do is clean them off.

Horticultural oil does work effectively. That's what I used on my huge old sago that had a scale infestation. The oil is quite expensive though, and I've heard several accounts of used coffee grounds being an effective scale treatment. Since eradicating the scale on my sago 3 years ago, I have been showering it with used coffee grounds mixed with water as a preventive treatment since Asian Cycad Scale is an ongoing problem in Florida. There are alkaloids in the coffee grounds, and the "tea" made with them feels quite oily. It doesn't hurt the plant.

I didnt know used coffee grinds work too. Ive got plenty of that!

Good to know. I know that citrus love coffee grinda anyway for their acidity, and one of my oranges happens to have scale, so maybe Ill try some coffee grinds before I waste time with rubbing alcohol (because rubbing alcohol deifnately works, but its time consuming and you have to make sure you get all the scale if you dont want it comming back easily).

Good luck!

my pindo has some white small fussy scale that squashed easily - sorry to be gross,

i am using "insect killing soap" by Safer. Did anyone ever try the soap insecticides? I had success with them, but never used them on palms before.

I-soaps work well
Any insect spray product with oil in it will smother the scale,they should dry up and not be a problem after that but you need do keep checking the plant periodically.

My Sago has scale and I've been treating it with used coffee grinds. So far the scale persists but we'll see. I may have a larger infestation.

i was afraid of that, let us know if coffee grinds work.

There was a nice thread on a GW forum a year or two ago regarding the use of used coffee grounds to control scales on cycads. Influenced by the posts on that thread I started using coffee grounds on my potted plants whenever there was a scale infestation and I've had great results. The guy who started it all, has written an article that I found very useful.

Good luck,

Nikitas

Here is a link that might be useful: Tom Broome's article

Great article. So does this method work for any palms with scale (because Ive got quite a few to try it out on!) or does it only work on cycads?

I've applied this method to all my potted date palms and to several other potted plants with very good results. I see no reason to limit the application only to cycads but I'm not an expert. On the other hand, it doesn't cost me anything and the coffee grounds also make a nice soil ammendment.

Nikitas