Try to find a way to sterilize the soil it's in as well. Soil acts as a pest reservoir during an infestation.

I use the first on this lists. Took care of scale on a Gynura within three days. Makes me nervous to try it on a strawberry if it's that effective o_o

Here is a link that might be useful: Systemic Insecticide

Don't use a granular if you intend on using it inside. I have the Bayer rose systemic with added ferts and have to evict my plants until the smell dissipates. Which is usually a couple months. Come to think of it, this would be an excellent time to take your plant outside for the rest of the summer.

Toni, (hopefulauthor) has a home made tobacco spray which she uses and it really does work as does fish emulsion sprays which suffocate the scale.

I found this recipe, I know it's not Toni's but when I did a search I couldn't find hers. I also cannot stress enough, do not use it on nightshades, which can get tobacco mosaic virus. Use the below as a spray. I would do this outside when it's not windy.

-Takes 3 fingers of regular chewing tobacco and place it in the end of a nylon. Use this as a teabag and steep the tobacco in 1 cup of water for approximately 20 minutes.

-Take the 1 cup of tobacco tea and add it to 1 cup of antiseptic mouthwash. The antiseptic works just like alcohol does in store-bought insecticides.

-Add 1 cup of Murphy's Oil soap to the mixture. The soap literally suffocates the bugs by coating their body and preventing them from breathing. The soap also helps the mixture to stick to the leaves and prevents diluting from the rain.

-To use your homemade insecticide, use 2 tablespoons of mixture to 1 gallon of water. If you wish to use all of the mixture, dilute it with 20 gallons of water.

Word of caution
Please remember that this is a very powerful insecticide. Do not alter the recipe. It is also important that the insecticide not be used on food plants. Spray your garden discriminately with the insecticide, as you do not wish to kill beneficial bugs or harm the birds that may eat the bugs.

I really worry about the recommendations of outdoor ornamental systemics for use on indoor plants. They are not only NOT LABELED for such use, but would be extremely hazardous to do so. erict, your preferred pesticide is never to be used on edible plants at all; that is clearly outlined on the label. It should never be used on indoor plants, as well.

Murphy's oil is not a suffocant. Believe it or not, it doesn't have any oil in it! ;-) ( Vegetable oil is used in the making of this soap, but it changes to something else during the process.) It is a true soap, however, as opposed to a detergent, and could be used as an insecticidal soap. I'd not recommend it, personally, because of the additives it has: surfactants, fragrances, etc.

So what to use? There are many good horticultural soaps on the market that would be very helpful. Commercial insecticidal soaps are effective and much less hazardous to your plants than many home remedies. Besides, there's an honest-to-goodness label.

I recently ordered a tapeworm plant (Homalocladium) online from, er, a big midwestern nursery, which unfortunately arrived covered with scale. I've manually beat them back a bit but have no illusions that they're gone for good. Yesterday I just stripped away all the soil and repotted it in a soilless turface/"axis" mix, hoping to get rid of the reservoir problem. I'm considering just cutting the plant back nearly to the ground, since I'm guessing it's a fairly fast grower and it is not an easy plant to inspect for scale.

I agree with rhizo about being nervous using outdoor systemics indoor. Hey, what about Wilt-Pruf? Wouldn't that give scale insects rather severe problems? Hmm... At some point I thought there was some anti-pest use for Wilt-Pruf, but their web site doesn't mention it, so I'm guessing that means it didn't pan out?

The reason the above recipe shouldn't be used on edibles is because it has tobacco in it, which can give nightshades, ie: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, okra, brugmansia, ect. tobacco mosaic virus. Tobacco is safe to use in the house, otherwise it wouldn't be used by pet owners. It was the inside insecticide before there were insecticides. My grandmother used tobacco for years, and her mother before her, and hers before her. It's not a new thing, nor an untried thing. It's a lot safer than chemical pesticides, and it's easier to breath after using it. I am highly alergic to chemical smells of all kinds. Some perfumes make me swell up or choke, also, I can't even take medicine stonger than tylenol without getting ill, but tobacco sprays do not bother me at all.

I would change the recipe to as follows (my grandmother's recipe):
1 pack of cigarettes with filters and paper removed, (excellent dewormer, kills fungus gnats and other flying pests in nothing flat)
1/4 cup powdered soap flakes (not detergent, helps displace water and makes it spread easier)
1/2 cup listerine (anteseptic, it helps prevent fungus and disease from forming on stressed plant)
3 T garlic juice (from jar of garlic, natural insect repellant)
1/4 cup clear glycerine (helps mixture cling)
1/4 cup powdered milk (excellent for powdery mildew and mealy bugs, clings to pest and suffocates them)
3 T cayenne pepper flakes (natural insect repellant)
3 T Grapefruit seed extract (anti-bacterial)
3 T grated fresh ginger (anti-bacterial)

Add all ingerdients except glycerine, lysterine, milk, and soap to a glass pan with 1 cup of boiling water for ten minutes, stir constantly.

Drain in a coffee filter into a jar
add soap flakes, milk, listerine, and glycerine,
add enough water to make a quart, shake well

Take your plant outside, add 2 tsp to a 32 oz spray bottle and spray plant liberally. This will discolor furnature and walls, so take it outside. Let plant dry in the shade, then either wash off plant or bring it in immediately. This should be repeated three times every tenth day.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of using tobacco, you could always go slug hunting and add about 5 chopped up slugs to a quart of water and spray the plant with. This also works excellently as a insect repellant. However, most people aren't so brave.

Do not use an outdoor pesticide indoors. Period. Read the entire label - it must be labelled specifically for use on houseplants. Then check if you can spray it indoors, or if you have to take the plant outside to spray, wait for it to dry, then bring it back indoors.

Scale on large scheffs is a real challenge to eradicate. If you can carry the plant outdoors without hurting yourself, I recommend Bayer 3-in-1, it's a spray labelled for houseplants that also has some residual systemic action. You'll have to use it three times over a period of several weeks.

If rubbing alcohol isn't working use an insecticidal soap labeled for houseplants.

You can also try a product containing Neem Oil that is labeled for houseplants.

You must spray the scale to kill it. You must do this more than once.

There used to be a systemic houseplant granule but I think it is off the market. Stank to high heaven and could harm pets or children who dug in the dirt anyway.

NEVER use systemics of any kind on edibles.

NEVER spray insecticides labeled for outdoor use indoors or on houseplants. You will likely burn them severely or flat out kill them.

Pesticides can be dangerous. PLEASE read and follow the labels.

Ack. Yesterday I realized things are so much worse than I'd realized. I'm kind of a laissez-faire guy when it comes to weeds and bugs, but this thread, plus the arrival of the infested Homalocladium, got me to look at some of my other containered plants that are spending the summer on our porch. Hmm, rather more plants with scale than I'd realized. And then I noticed the 8' X 8' beautyberry in the ground whose every stem is covered with white barnacles, and whose leaves are sticky sooty black; no idea how I'm going to treat that size plant with that level of infestation in an environmentally responsible manner! And then I decide to look carefully at the beasts responsible for all this, and realize that I've got FIVE species of scale (including a mealybug species) attacking this relatively small concentration of plants!

My ever-helpful DW suggested that maybe I should get into scale collecting instead of plant collecting.

I'd get after your outside plants with the loppers, pruning them to the ground. Rake up and dispose of the debris and the mulch around the plants and be prepared to spray with cold-pressed Neem oil as the new growth occurs. You know, you could prune your schefflera all the way to the ground, too. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the regrowth of all of your plants.

Catching an infestation early on is important, as you have found out!

rhizo, my scheffs are all seedlings or first year cuttings, I doubt they'd come back! (Oh, wait, I see; I'm not the original poster, just chimed in with a similar but apparently much worse problem).

See, part of my problem is that I'm a professional biologist, and I'm especially loathe to blast things with chemicals, and am generally impressed with how well nature takes care of these outbreaks without any help from me (I rarely if ever see massive scale, mealy bug, or even aphid infestations out in the field). So my instinct has always been to hold off before acting. However, I do see the limitations of this philosophy in the current situation!

Clib, you getting into the scale-selling business? LOLOL
I wonder if there are any birds/insects that eat scale.

Like you, I steer clear of chemicals. We have birds, so there is no way I'd blast insecticides, indoors or out. (We're also concerned about wildlife, and of course our dogs.)

I talk to a woman in Fl who owns a citrus nursery. She told me they foliar spray Fish Emulsion as a preventative and organic insecticide against scale.
About a year after our discussion, I ordered an Olive Tree from an online nursery. It arrived, and was placed in the front plant room 'without inspection, big mistake,' among other plants. A few days later while misting, I noticed a brown spot on an Olive leaf. Not one, but hundreds of scale, everywhere. Not only was the Olive infested, but those little buggers managed to attach to neighboring citrus trees, and other tropicals. I panicked.
Then I recalled the conversation she and I had. I mixed FE and water, using her recepie, and sprayed each plant thoroughly. I swear, by day 2 all scale were goners. A few days later, after rechecking, I applied a second application. No scale survived. It was truly amazing.
Since, every autumn, before plants are brought indoors, each and every plant get sprayed with FE.
I must warn you. FE has a fishy odor, but if you spray outside it won't make a difference..the smell lasts 1-2 days depending on humidity and heat.
They also sell an odorless type. I've never used it, so cannot honestly say whether or not it's truly odorless.
The thing is, it rids scale.

If you decide to try FE, Walmart sells it. If not Walmart, Home Depot might have it. I've never been in a Lowe's, so can't say.
It's also sold on Ebay at reasonable prices. HomeHarvest.com sells it too.

You have nothing to lose. Fish Emulsion's main use is organic fertilizer. Therefore it won't burn roots.

I'm not sure what you meant when you said your plants have scale mealy. What are they? As far as I know, mealy and scale are two different pests.
FE doesn't eradicate Mealy bug. Good luck, Toni

Toni, mealy is actually one type of scale.

Toni,

Oh, dang, I missed the part where you said fish emulsion was mainly used as an organic fertilizer; I looked for, but couldn't find the fish emulsion that was sold as an insecticide! Ah well, what's another trip to the store(s)? Thanks for the tip, by the way. I did find a $22 bottle of NEEM, but couldn't quite bring myself to pay that much.

Alan

Alan, you need to know that the fish emulsion recommendation is Toni's and not generally used as a remedy for pest insects. She claims that it works for her, but I don't know how effective it would be to actually kill adult and nymphal stage scale (and mealies). If it does, it is because of the 'oil' in the fish oil. If you decide to try it (and why not??) be sure to let us know how you fared.

If it looks like you need a back-up plan, I'd strongly recommend that you consider the Neem, but be sure that it's a cold-pressed product with a high percentage of the active ingredient Azadirachtin. Not all Neem products are manufactured the same way. Azadirachtin is the natural ingredient in the neem seeds (and other parts, I guess) that is so effective against insect pests that feed on plant foliage and juices (like your scale).

Another plan would be to use a simple horticultural oil. I'd prefer a product labeled for the appropriate use, rather than your Wilt-Pruf. But that's just me. ;-) Oils are effective against mealies and scale, by the way.

Clibanarius,Try your local Walmart in the plant fertilizer area,that's where they sell it where I live.I have seen neem oil @ Lowes don't remember if it was cold -pressed but I have seen it recommended for scale.

The thing about scale is that when it's in the crawling stage (spring) it's vulnerable and you can eliminate it easily with a solution of one quart water, one teaspoon dish soap and one teaspoon olive oil.

Once it's settled down and grown a shell, though, that shell pretty much protects it from anything you might spray on it.

Since you've missed the crawling window this year, here's my suggestion, which is by no means gospel:

1) Cut everything back as hard as you can and dispose of the trimmings very carefully.

2) Look over your plants very carefully and pick off as many scales as you can find by hand. Make sure to look on the underside of the leaves and on the twigs. Go over them once a month from now until spring.

3) Fertilize minimally for the rest of the year. Scale will thrive on plants that get a lot of nitrogen (see link).

4) Towards the end of winter, isolate any plants that are still scale-free, so the crawlies don't infect them. Spray infected plants twice a week with the water/soap/oil solution.

Matt

Here is a link that might be useful: Scale