Sick Lemon Tree - ID This Disease/Bug

[chilliking]

My Lemon Tree is poorly, has been for some weeks.

It is covered in these little oval patches tht are no more than 2-3mm accross. They are slimey to touch almost like a slug and can be rubbed off. I've tried a couple of sprays with some bayer pesticide but it doesn't seem to have helped.

Any ideas what this is and the best method to resolve the issue?


The tree has been outside for all of the summer.

Any ideas?

[rustylady]

Looks like scale insects to me - some advice here Scale insects / Royal Horticultural Society

[Kirk]

Scale insect.
Spray with a systemic insecticide that does them in.
Wait a few days and spray again.
A couple of days after that you can wipe most off with a kitchen towel or two.
They do not conveniently drop off when dead.
Difficult to get rid of totally, they will be most obvious on the stems and branches but also on the back of leaves along the ridges.

Suspect that you will need to spray a lot of times to finally get rid of them.

My lime tree has them and I have the same problem. I stand that in the bath every couple of week and it gets sprayed. I do rinse the bath afterwards.

[chilliking]

any ideas what is a good/safe spray to use?

[rustylady]

any ideas what is a good/safe spray to use?

Read the link I posted above chilliking

[Kirk]

I use the one in the third paragraph of RL's link, THe Bayer Provado Ultimate Bug Killer. It has a picture of a scale insect on the side so I presumed at the time of purchase it killed them. Always read what it kills off as scale insect may not be one of them.

Will help if you can spray it fairly often, they are persistant little whatsits and getting everywhere on the plant is not easy.

If anyone knows of one I can water into the pot that will get absorbed up the roots and do the same I would like to know.

[starloc]

Use bayer provado on the tree, after you remove all of the ones you can see , use a cotton bud dipped in meths and dab it on and it kills them, but there are thousands of microscopic ones running all over the tree , and thats why you need to spray it with provado

imidacloprid used to be in provado ( not anymore to save the bees ) and its what you use to water the tree and kill them that way , keep bees away from the tree if you do ( not a problem at this time of year ) the one to use to water it with is bayer provado lawn grub killer, its got the right stuff in it but not sold for scale insect use to save the bees

The latest bayer provado seems to work better on contact when sprayed on than the old one, but for systemic watering use the grub killer