Is this scale on my English ivy? How to prevent spreading to other outdoor and indoor plants ? Should I just uproot and throw them out?

Question

I live in an apartment. I have a few climbing plants - English ivy, star jasmine and lonicera out on the balcony in the setup shown here.

Last year I got aphids on my outdoor plants - there were a few other plants outside, which I had to throw out because the aphids got out of hand, but I could deal with the aphids on the climbing plants sufficiently with neem oil and soap. This year, with the start of the spring season, I again saw aphids and, as a result, ants coming back. Since they were smaller in number, I managed them by cutting some of the newer on which they were feeding off and killing the aphids.

But now I see these yellow and brown bumps on the leaves of the english ivy and ants surrounding it. This is some kind of scale, right? I do not know what they are, how to treat it or how to prevent them. I also read that scale can eventually give rise to crawlers that might crawl and come indoors and affect my indoor plants. How do I prevent that from happening. Please help.

Please note that I do not like using chemical pesticides on my plants. I only used neem oil and soap last year, but I have been avoiding using that because I read that using that dissociates beneficial insects as well. I can go back to it if it is absolutely needed.

Would the best solution be to uproot and throw out the plants altogether, since they are quite a bunch and tangled together?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Scale can be controlled by scraping with a fingernail. They just need to be dislodged , they don't generally reattach. Depending on the situation , it may not be worth the time. I have a 5 ft. sweetbay in the yard and scrape scale for 10 minutes every few days, it has worked.