Diana,
When the momma scale mates with the daddy scale the momma lays eggs under
her shell. At some point the momma scale dies and protects the eggs with
her shell which gets leathery and dry. After some time the eggs hatch and a
bunch of small whitish dusty looking babies crawl out from under the shell
and look for a nice leaf to attach to. These are the crawlers. In large
quantities they could be mistaken for mealie bugs.
Gene
"Diana Kulaga" wrote in message
...
Gene & Rob,
I have a question for both of you. Thankfully, scale is generally not a
huge
problem for me. I see it now and then, but seldom, really. And I have
never
seen anything that I could identify as crawling scale. When I *have* had
scale, it appears attached to the plant, having sunk its wicked fangs in
already. Thorough searches have not produced anything further.
Am I missing something?
Diana
"Rob" wrote in message
...
Gene Schurg wrote:
Rob,
It is interesting that you could be observing the same thing as I. Did
you
spray or drench with the Bayer product? Did you water between
applications
where the plants could suck up water without the chemicals?
I tried a drench (trash can and pump with hose) with just the bayer for
three consecutive weeks in early summer. That didn't work, or at least
not completely. When I added the IGR into the mix, it was applied as a
spray to the point of complete saturation of as much leaf surface as
possible (top and bottom), again for three consecutive weeks, within a
couple hours after watering the greenhouse in my normal way. I'm not
sure
of the rationale of that, but I did have one. It made sense to water
before so that I wouldn't wash out chemical before it had a chance to be
absorbed, and I thought that perhaps the leaves would be more actively
transpiring right after a nice watering and more susceptible to
absorbing
chemical.
Distance is supposed to have translaminar systemic activity (absorbed
through the leaves), which is one of the reasons I picked it. I don't
think EnstarII is systemic (I could be wrong). It is about the same
cost,
but you have to buy a whole quart... They target the same pathway.
And actually, come to think of it, I used orthene instead of
imidocloprid
for the first two weeks. Both have systemic activity. I was worried
that
the bugs were becoming resistant to repeated imidocloprid treatment, and
I
hadn't used orthene in a while. This way I was hoping to get the
resistant ones in the first two passes, and get the longer residual of
the
imidocloprid on the last one. And orthene is cheap... Probably a
stupid
idea.
--
Rob's Rules: http://littlefrogfarm.com
1) There is always room for one more orchid
2) There is always room for two more orchids
2a) See rule 1
3) When one has insufficient credit to obtain more
orchids, obtain more credit