Thursday, February 05, 2009

For the sake of the lemon tree: Me vs. Scales


I was bequeathed a dwarf Meyer lemon tree a little over a year ago. Its had blossoms and little fruits, but they have all been aborted. No fruit yet and it takes 9 months for full fruit goodness. Maybe the fact that I haven't turned the heat on and its a subtropical plant is a factor. Decreased sunlight from the winter? Or perhaps vermin. I have been fighting scales for almost a year. Nothing as scary as the wiki article, but really annoying. At first I tried a plastic butter knife, but this wasn't as precise as I needed. Then fingers and their nails, not bad. Soapy water (made from real water and real soap)? This is supposed to work, results not in yet. But my new favorite manual removal method is to use my Swingline Ultimate blade-style staple remover to scrape the scales to certain death. Burn Scales Burn!

2 comments:

3leet said...

nice re-purposing of office equipment. It's probably the lack of light. But maybe its the lack of humidity as well.

M said...

I try to humidify it and rotate it with frequency to help with the light as well as manipulate the phototropism