What is this besides disgusting??

My sister sent me this photo of Dutch iris she has in pots. The one plant seems to have eggs or some sort of larval business going on. What is it? I told her she should get rid of it. Will she need to get rid of the entire pot?

Scale perhaps? The white stuff around the base could be scale shells.

Never heard of scale, but I googled it. You could be right. These are a gray color, however, and anything I found on the web indicated white or some sort of color like brown or red. Where would they have come from?

i am thinking scale too grey is common color i have seen.

yuck, looks like scale to me too. you can try alcohol spray if they are soft scale. if they are the hard shell scale, you will have to spray with oil (pam will work), to smother them. scale come in just about every color and they just show up here and there. sometimes they are in the soil when you buy the plant.

Scale insects often build up to large numbers because they go undetected. Their shell protects them from pesticides which makes controlling them all the more difficult. They are usually found on stems and the undersides of leaves but, you can also find them on both sides of the leaves.

Oils can be useful for controlling scale insects. Small infestations can also be removed by touching each insect with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol as trackinsand suggested. Scales suck your plants juices, they stunt the plants growth and secrete a sticky honeydew-like substance which attracts other pests.

Newly hatched insects -called crawlers sometimes- are easier to control because they lack a shell and are susceptible to insecticides. You can use insecticides like Sevin, Orthene, malathion, insecticidal soaps and horticultural oils. Follow the label directions and do not forget to spray again until the infestation has been brought under control.

Boy, I wish that image was clearer. It could even be aphids, which are a lot easier to get rid of then scale. Soapy water will work on them. And what is that stuff at the bottom of the plant, on the soil? That's not associated with scale or aphids. Is it another problem?

I don't know, ceejay, as I never saw it. Sis ended up tying up the whole pot in a garbage bag and tossing it out, ceejay. She decided it wasn't worth $3 worth of bulbs to have a bad infestation in her sunroom. I haven't talked to her in about a week now to see if anything else had trouble.

Now that I'm typing this, I realize I was busy relating all your information to my sister, and never came back to post a thank you. I'm a klutz. Thank you for your help, everyone. Happy New Year!

i was wondering that too, ceejay. i've never seen scale around the base like that (on the soil). i've been dealing with a white mold/fungus lately that looks similar. it's in the garden around some plant stems. i'm not too worried about it. this time of year we get some strange stuff growing on top of the soil. we had a hard freeze the other night and that will probably kill it off.

trackin - If you look at it closely, it looks like individual critters - like larvae of something. What, I don't know.

Do you use hard wood mulch?

I had a problem with Southern blight on my Dietes this year. On the ground around the stems where they emerge from the ground and right on up them... I have never had Southern blight on anything before. I didn't even know Dietes were susceptible, but all the markers for it were there.

i use pine bark mulch and i also use pine shavings. i have to add alfalfa pellets over the shavings because of the nitrogen loss but the shavings really seem to hold the moisture in well.

hmmm, that southern blight looks like something i have on a few rose canes down at soil level. it also looks a little like snow scale (bane of many a garden).

Southern blight will have little round tan colored objects that look a lot like Osmocote at the base of the plant. Very diagnostic.

Because it is in the soil, we dug up and tossed the Dietes, treated the soil with Terraclor, and (because I have an outdoor cat and I don't trust anything) covered the area with plastic cloth, weighted down with bricks. It's been several months now. Guess I should remove the plastic now, yes? :-)

I asked about the mulch because hardwood mulch is usually not composted nearly enough, and white fungal mats occur beneath it (which, incidentally, repel water, causing plants mulched with it to suffer from lack of water, and sometimes die). I love my pine straw!

i get the white fungal mats too, but only in the areas that don't receive enough sun. well, i don't have southern blight, but i know the stuff i have is some sort of fungus. i won't worry yet! i'll probably throw out some cornmeal in a couple of days. that often times takes care of any kind of fungus. if it looks like it's damaging a plant, i'll spray with baking soda water. thanks for the tip on diagnosing the blight. hopefully i'll never need it!

Yeah, cornmeal and baking soda don't hurt it at all! I'm crossing my fingers that the Terraclor eliminated it. Time will tell.