San Jose Scale
Like most fruit tree pests, San Jose Scale can be treated organically, but you will need to follow these 7 important steps.
- Prevent disease by ensuring a healthy tree
- Inspect you trees regularly for symptoms of disease
- Determine your threshold for intervention
- Understand this insects life cycle
- Use the right product at the right time
- Monitor for results
- Reapply treatment if necessary
Prevent disease by ensuring a healthy tree
San Jose Scale is most prevalent in hot, dry weather. When your tree is receiving too much nitrogen, San Jose Scale will be attracted to new fast growing branches.
Fruit Trees are naturally able to thrive with minor pest pressure. The environment that we live in is full of natural checks and balances that keep most pests under control. When a tree is stressed or natural systems have been interrupted, fruit trees are more susceptible to pests and disease. Make sure you have the right fruit tree variety for your climate., make sure your tree is receiving the right nutrients and water, and make sure your tree is receiving plenty of sunlight. If you follow these basic principles, your fruit tree will naturally be able to defend itself from pests and disease.
Inspect your trees regularly for symptoms of disease.
Early detection is important when treating fruit trees for San Jose Scale. When this insect is small it is difficult to see. When young scale start feeding on the sap of your fruit trees, they will pierce the bark and suck the sap from your tree. Where these insects are feeding a small red or purple ring will appear. This is the first symptom of San Jose Scale.
Determine your Threshold for Intervention
Because scale sucks the sap from your trees, it will cause some level of stress. Most trees will thrive for years with San Jose scale, but if left untreated, it can quickly turn into an infestation.
Understand this insects life cycle
San Jose Scale is related to aphids and adult males can fly from one tree to another. Young scale can spread from one tree to another by wind, water, or gardeners clothes, tools, or from moving branches from one location to another. Females are wingless and have an armored shell. This armor protects them from natural predators and organic sprays.
Use the right product at the right time
If you see San Jose Scale on your fruit trees, the first thing you can do is rub it off gently with a gloved hand, but this only works when the tree is dormant. Once leaves, blossoms, and fruit emerge rubbing away scale becomes too labor intensive. When young scale hatches in the spring it crawls around the tree until it finds it's permanent resting place and develops it's armored shell. While young scale are on the move, you can treat your tree with organic pesticides like Neem Oil or Pyganic.
Because the young scale is so small it is difficult to time your organic treatment at the right time. You can identify when this insect is crawling around your tree by wrapping a few twigs with double sided tape and monitoring that tape for young scale. Tangle foot can also be used for monitoring scale activity in fruit trees.
Monitor for results
If you are still seeing scale on your fruit trees weeks after treatment, continue to monitor your tree's health. If your tree is infested in scale it will weaken your tree, but it usually takes more than one year of infestation to kill a mature fruit tree.
Reapply treatment as necessary
In warmer climates scale will have a second generation in late summer. If you are still seeing scale on your fruit trees continue to monitor insects for the second crawling period. As soon as young scale are on the move again, repeat your treatment.
When your tree returns to dormancy, you can again try rubbing adult scale off the branches with a soft glove on your hand. and repeat treatment in spring as needed.
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