As the weather gets colder and you start moving your stock, or in some cases “pet plants,” indoors, you may also be moving some pests inside as well. Scale insects, for example, are one such pest that may have gotten on your plants over the summer, especially true of some woody tropicals that were reinvigorated by nature during the summer. Ficus varieties like Ficus benjamina is a good example.
Please bear in mind the opposite is usually the case: oftentimes plants are moved outside to get healthy and pest-free — and it works just like that. Experience, however, has taught us to be wary as we’ve seen many cases of scale introduced exactly the way we described in the first paragraph. Thus, we decided to offer two scale controls Aphytis melinus and Rhyzobius lophanthae at a reduced rate for a couple of weeks. The former, a parasitoid, is effective against some armored scale species and is best used for prevention or low infestation management. The latter, a beetle, should take care of a number of other species of both hard and soft scale, and they are capable of controlling larger numbers.
Sorry, our other scale (and mealybug) controls are not being discounted at this time. Do check back at another time. They will be at some point, so do stay tuned.
This sale is effective until the ordering deadline on October 17th, 2008, and will apply to orders placed by phone, fax, or made online. Please note, though, that the special pricing is good only for orders shipped no later than October 24th, 2008 (unless there is a delay on our end). You may purchase A. melinus and R. lophanthae online now in our shop.
If you want to stay up-to-date with fleeting offers like this, just visit our Bug Blog often to look for announcements, or just subscribe to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. If you’re wondering what an RSS feed is, check out that help topic.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: October 17th, 2008 at 5:04 pm →
This sale has been concluded. We will have others, though. To stay current on this sort of thing, since announcements will be made in our Bug Blog, subscribe to our RSS Feed.