Euonymous Scale

[debrac69]

I have a small (maybe 28" tall) euonymous bush that I just found heavily covered in scale. It's in the middle of the front foundation bed which is heavily mulched so I rarely go in it.

I did a little research which is how I found out it is scale. One website said to spray the entire bush with Sevin in late August/early September to reduce the population, or if it's heavily infected to dispose of the entire bush.

I think disposal would be the best bet here. I have 4 of these bushes and this one was the best of all of them, but none of them were doing very well. I only found the scale went I went to dig the 4 shrubs up to transplant them hopefully where they might do better.

Do I need to worry about the other euonymous also having scale since this one is in the middle of the others? I did a quick check on 2 of them and didn't see what I now know are the white adult males which is what first drew my attention to the problem.

I have some kind of evergreen in there too ~ maybe yews ~ and a row of boxwood. Should I be concerned about them?

Any suggestions on how to keep scale from coming in the first place? I'm a better "protective" gardner than "clean up" gardener so I'd rather do everything I can to stop a problem before it starts.

[matkin]

I had four varigated euonymous bushes along my drive way. They were there about fifteen years and then three years ago something happened. They started getting a growth on them every year, with the next year getting worse. It was a growth that looked like a cauliflower floret. I tried fungicides, sulpher sprays. The only thing that seemed to help slow it down ( a little) was a systemic rose disease spray. In the end nothing really worked very well and I finally cut the bushes out. So hope you have better luck than I did.

[florajo]

Hi Debra, I dealt with scale on my variegated privets for a long time. Two of them near my foundation became infested several years ago. I tried insecticide/fungicide spray and it seemed to work for awhile, but then the scale returned (I guess it was never really 'gone'). So I finally ended up removing the bushes. Then two more of my privets (again, near the foundation) showed signs of scale. I immediately starting spraying them, and it helped for awhile. But eventually I had to remove those bushes, too. I have another group of privets that are not close to the foundation. They are large and healthy and have never shown any signs of scale, though they were in close proximity to the others that had scale. I wonder if being in the foundation bed (drip line) promotes scale? Sorry I couldn't be more helpful....that's just my experience with it.

[debrac69]

Thank you for your responses. It seems scale is one tough little sucker! I think we're just going to rip them out and be done with it.

Florajo ~ so nice to hear from you!

[Danaus29]

Dormant oil. Gardens Alive sells it. Stuff works wonderfully on scale.