There are few things in the garden that really gross me out. A slithering snake may make me jump. A Black Widow spider may make me “squeal like a girl”. Tiny ticks send me running in terror of Lyme Disease. But, when it comes to mixing it up with the dirty, slimy, messy, crawly parts of the garden — mucking things out, tackling the yuck and such — I don’t mind much; actually, I enjoy it. Chalk that up to a childhood hauling stinking, rotting tomatoes to the compost heap on the farm or mucking horse stalls for days on end or sticking my entire arm up the back end of a ewe to help her give birth.
Compost and Spiders and Worms and Bugs - Oh My!
I’ve done some nasty stuff, so there’s little that really gives me the willies. Yesterday, for instance, I scooped up a couple of big, slimy slugs barehanded for Mrs. C and tossed them far from her ornamental Heuchera they were munching – no biggie; I did it without a second thought. But, today, I encountered a pest that makes me shiver from head to toe and back — you know the kind where someone asks, “Who just walked over your grave?” Yeah, it was like that.
Scale – lots and lots of Scale. All over the branches of a new client’s blooming apple espalier trees. It was so gross I managed to forget to take a photo of it, but there are plenty of photos of the nasty stuff out there for you to view, if you can stand it.
Scale is a soft-bodied parasitic pest that comes in many forms and attacks a multitude of plants in the garden. And, it loves the Rosaceae plant family — from thorny roses to delicious apples. In some cases it will even ruin fruit. The female Scale attach themselves to the plant and begin sucking the life from the plant’s vascular system. As they suck out the delicious juices from the plant, they excrete “honeydew” – aka sugar-poo. And, guess what? Ants like this. So, yes, the ants were there, traveling the stem, caring for the Scale to enjoy the delicious sugar-poo meals. Yep, Ants farm Scale…and Aphids…and any other pest that they can milk for honey-poo.
The otherwise soft-bodied Scale insects live a stationary life (or at least the females do). So, to protect themselves they excrete a waxy coating over their stationary bodies. Eventually, this waxy coating hardens up and looks a lot like scales on a reptile. Right now, my client’s apples still have some overwintered females still under their hard shells from last year, but some have hatched. This means they now have a fresh new generation of softer bodied Scale that have just set up shop on the stem and are just now building up their protective coatings. And, yep, those Ants are working their livestock like crazy; its like a sugar-poo keg party on those stems.
And, here’s a part you’ll really love: the youngsters look like big, fat, yellow puss-filled zits begging to be popped. And that’s exactly what I suggested the homeowners do – pop those suckers. Kill those mothers and do it now. Their trees are relatively small and the pests are accessible. So, hand-removal is an option. There are other methods out there for managing Scale, but I’m not going to advocate for those, particularly in this situation.
I popped a few for her. Pointed out the multiple life cycles apparent on the plant, shimmied with the willies and moved on to the next item in the garden. And, yep, I put the vision of the Scale far from my mind when I later took photos.
Any pests or gardening things that make your skin crawl? Please do tell…
