Thursday, February 25, 2010

Drastic Measures!



Do you recognize these? No? They are Ficus trees! Yep, sorry looking as they are. They seem to drop their leaves just by looking at them. So I started to investigate them and discovered that they had scale. Weird to look at, little flat, brown splotches that were most prevalent on the newest, greenest growth. And there were little sticky spots on the leaves too. At the same time that the damage was being done, the trees were starting to put out new leaves.
I thought that by cutting everything back I would get rid of the pests. By brushing some insecticidal soap over all of the remaining branches, the new growth will be unaffected. And it's still early enough that the trees should put out new leaves and new branches as spring approaches.
That's the plan anyway. Hope this works, otherwise I now have 2 new modern sculptures in the bedroom!

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