Cottony cushion scale. Dam!!!

Discussion in 'Citrus' started by aesir22, Jan 10, 2009.

  1. aesir22

    aesir22 Active Member

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    Hi all,

    And here I thought I had managed this entire inter with only irritating fungus gnats as my enemy. But now, when watering one of my meyer lemons, I found a cottony cushion scale. Disgusting thing, made my skin crawl (not the biggest lover of bugs!)

    The question I have now, is what do I do? I got it off the plant, and will be closely inspecting all of my others. I don't have access to horticultural oils (only cooking oil ha ha) any idea what I should do?
     
  2. StarLoc

    StarLoc Active Member

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    i have used cooking oil, sunflower, groundnut, canola oil, ricebran oil all work fine , mix something like a teaspoon in a liter of water and a drop of `antibacterial fairy` dishwash liquid , give a good shake and it works well, use only a tiny bit of the dishwash liquid

    I prefer neem oil, it is an insecticide as well it makes them not want to eat even if it doesnt kill them and doesnt collect dust so much as when you spray with sunflwer oil, i often add a spoon of sunflower oil to the neem oil solution, If theres ay moths flying round, indoors or out i add a bit of dipel to the mix as well

    After some posts on the citrus gardenweb forum, i looked up limonene, the patents database is listing it as a powerfull insecticide for use on plants, its distilled out of orange peel, i got some last week and it kills things quickly, and smells like the plants as well, unlike neem oil
     
  3. aesir22

    aesir22 Active Member

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    I was considering a spray I have read of using olive oil, dish soap, citrus juice and crushed garlic. I have checked all of my citrus, and I haven't found anything else, though I do worry that the younger ones are mobile.

    I have an insecticide downstairs, a commercial one bought from B&Q. It is safe to use on edible fruit plants I may look at that also. Yuck! Sick little thing it was!
     
  4. StarLoc

    StarLoc Active Member

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    the oil usualy works, but i had problems one time with brown scale, i have some strong pesticides from ebay.com (malathion, spinosad) but you need to mix them up so i got a bayer provado one from the garden center , killed brown scale super quick, but i have since read it can cause spidermites, and i did get that one plant covered in spider mites shortly afterwards, how the spidermites appear i dont know!
    The orange oil works, but doesnt have much limonene in it, you can get pure limonene and neem oil from ebay.co.uk
     
  5. Millet

    Millet Well-Known Member 10 Years

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