Another related question about helping the pollinators ....... I'm told to leave water out for the butterflies ......... but the OK Master Gardeners told me yesterday to ensure there's no standing water in my yard or in containers, to prevent mosquitos from mulitplying .

I'm having a tough time deciding which specie of insect to deal with .

wow, I was expecting a 10 paragraph response telling me all about scale and how to control them organically.

The standard treatment for scale on shrubs for as far back as I can remember has been to spray them with dormant oil during the dormant season . Timing is important. Nowadays they have a superior form of dormant oil that is a superfine summer-weight dormant oil product that is not supposed to damage plants if sprayed during the non-dormant season. It is more lightweight and makes a tiny mist-light spray that suffocates the scale (as does the more heavyweight regular dormant oil).

As for organic controls, you cannot mix organics with the use of pesticides because regular spraying of broad-spectrum pesticides kills off the beneficial insects that would be helping control the scale. So, if you want to use an organic approach, you have to stop using the broad-spectrum pesticide and wait for the population of beneficial insects to return. If you already have a heavy scale infestation, I don't know if the plants could survive long enough for the beneficial insect population to rebuild. It can take months to years once the beneficials have been killed off before they can rebuilt to a large enough population to make a difference.

I'll find and link the nice long document you crave that tells you all about scale and its control, both organic and synthetic.

As for the butterfly vs. mosquito issue, I just keep a flat pan (filled with rocks) out for the butterflies whenever it is dry here. I also keep a mud puddle going for them. I don't worry too much about mosquitoes in wet years---they are going to be everywhere anyway no matter what I do or don't do as some of them can travel up to a mile. Usually we have enough predators around (bats, purple martins, dragonflies, etc.) that even though I see mosquitoes I really don't get bitten very often. Maybe the predators are getting the mosquitoes before they get me.

Good luck with your scale issues.

Dawn

MOBOT: Euonymous Scale

Thanks Dawn ..... I'm skeptical of the oil treatment. I read that its important to spray under the leaves as well as on top, where with an insecticide all that is important is to get some coverage on the leaves. On these boxwoods that have really small leaves, getting the bottoms of all the leaves is really difficult.

But I will investigate the light oil treatment for summertime. If it's not a major investment, then I really got nothing to lose. I was hoping someone here had first hand experience with scale.

So far ( knocking on wood ) the little buggers haven't shown up, maybe the malathion I used last fall really kept them down this year.

You're welcome. Scale is annoying and standard dormant oil works great on it in cold weather during the dormant season. I haven't used the lightweight oil on either euonymous or boxwood so don't know if it works as well. I am not sure what the maximum temperature is for using the summerweight oil either, so I hope that they have they stated plainly on the label because you wouldn't want to burn your foliage.

I haven't seen scale on anything on our property in ages and ages. I don't know if that is related to us being almost constantly in drought or if we have beneficials eating the scale, or what it might be. I saw scale more in Ft . Worth in the 1980s than I've seen it here.

I agree that getting anything sprayed on the bottoms of boxwood leaves would be incredibly difficult.

Oh, if they haven't shown up yet, this might be your lucky year. Maybe the malathion worked, and then maybe if they were trying to come back and repopulate, perhaps the great rain of 2015 has washed them clear down to the ocean.

Dawn