Herself's Houseplants

Scale until recently was only a problem on my orchids. Lately down here in Houston it has become an outdoor problem as well. I wish it was as easy to fix on trees as it is on houseplants.

Scale is a group of insects that feed on plants. You’ll notice them on your houseplants as hard bumps about an 1/8″ to 1/16″ across and usually dark brown. They don’t move or look like bugs. Usually plants will have sticky areas along the leaves as well.

Scale can also be white and long, thin bumps. However, I’ve only seen these scales outside.

Scale insects suck the sap out of your plant.

Because of their protective shell the only time spray on insecticides help is when they are first born and crawling to the location where they will build a shell over themselves.

Luckily houseplants are small and I’ve found that placing the infected plant in the sink, washing the leaves with soapy water ( ~ 1 tablespoon dish soap to a gallon of water ) will remove all the scale.

I then follow up with an insecticidial oil spray.

More information:
Scale Insects
Keys to scale insects ( photos of various kinds of scale for identification )

I picked this plant up at a store this week. I brought it home and found it so pot bound it was sitting like a loose rock in its pot! It had pulled all the dirt in the pot into a tiny ball it was so pot bound.

The first thing to do with a pot bound plant like this is get it out of that pot and soak it. This one soaked for an hour and still the dirt/root ball was too stiff to loosen.

If after soaking your plant you can very gently and slowly loosen up the root ball do so.

If you can not loosen the root ball take a very sharp, very clean knife and make 4 cuts, one on each side, from the top of the root ball, to the bottom about 1/4″ deep. This will allow the new roots to grow out instead of continuing to circle which would in time strangle the plant.

Once the roots are loosened or cut you can repot this plant in a larger container with some fresh potting soil.