Today's garden crawl [View all]

turned up a pest on the Fig. What I thought might be someone's eggs, turned out to be the actual animal, sucking the life force out of my fig. Fig wax scale, Ceroplastes rusci, invasive sap-sucking pest that covers itself in a hard, pinkish-gray to white waxy layer. It feeds on the phloem of fig. Like aphids, they excrete "honeydew" that ants love. As soon as the temp drops below 100 removal must begin!