Scale Bugs

I’m literally just coming up for air today, ready to share my news. I made the utterly ridiculous but common mistake of bringing soil in a planter into my grow room from my balcony. Big biiiiiiiiiig mistake.

It’s funny how you can look at something, like your plants and not see anything wrong. But then once you see one, two, three little pests, the full view comes clear. My poor little bonsai was covered in these tiny little scale bugs. I spent hours picking them off and spraying her down with cinnamon water, only to find that a week later there were more. I’m quite sure now that as eggs they are not visible to the naked eye but grow in time to be visible.

I have 7 flowering plants that are now fast-tracked to harvest early so I can scrub, sterilize, and prepare for another grow.

Anyone else experience this hateful and disgusting little creature?

Coccidae

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Smother with a horticultural oil, complete coverage is essential. They are pretty easy to kill, they don’t move once they find a spot to eat. Only the first instars move, but not far. They seems to prefer stalks.

I’ll trade you my russets mites for scales, you can even raise me some spider mites. :wink:

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thank you my friend. I didn’t react well to seeing them and began defoliating any leaves that had them.

We can check this one of my growing bucket list. Hopefully I’ll never get them again. It’s so odd. I’ll kill mosquitos and other insects but smushing these creepy little buggers really grosses me out. They have this weird waxy coating on them.

thanks for the feedback. It’s calmed me a bit :slight_smile:

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Yeah, they are weird, that shell is secreted and they live underneath that protective coat like an clamshell. They actually can be destructive, but a steady schedule of neem, or your preferred oil, twice a week for a few weeks took them out and they never returned for me. I also put on some rough cotton gloves and rubbed all afflicted areas to scrap off the adults. Luckily they don’t fly or move far, so they stay fairly localized, unlike many other pests.

Good luck!

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Soft-bodied insects are always a bit weirder to kill in my experience. Hard-bodied? No problem. Soft stuff? Ewwwwww.

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The gloves are a brilliant idea. I was utterly horrified earlier this week when I decided to do the tape test. I stuck some scotch tape on a suspicious looking area of the stalk and pulled it off. Just friggin covered with young ones. I’m sure the heat and humidity just made them reproduce like crazy. Heck, these tents are likely heaven for a pest!

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