I have a beautiful Meyer lemon tree, that has been giving me great fruit year round. This summer the branches and stems are just covered with scale and they have brought on the ants and aphids. There has to be a non-toxic spray for this condition as I do not want to hurt all my fruit. I have tried to use a high power hose with some limited success, but that does not reach everything. Any suggestions?
By Deborah Schmidt from Temecula, CA
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Your best bet is to Google the extension service for your area. Use the name of the nearest university and the words extension service for your search term, for example:
auburn university extension service
Your local extension services are an amazing source of information for gardening, and are geared toward your area-planting suggestions, pest control, how-to grow, etc. They'll have a printable sheet on how to rid your lemon tree of parasites, and the safest way to do so.
Another source of good information will be your local garden center plant nursery. Avoid the ones attached to big-box stores selling everything from groceries to colour TVs though, as it's not that common for the big-box stores to have a trained horticulture professional running the garden department. You need to speak with someone who knows what works in your area, and what products are out there that work with the least environmental impact, and you won't find that with most big-box garden department employees.
Sometimes you get lucky and the person in the Wally garden department is actually a gardener, but that's not normally the case, so you are much better off when looking for advice to go to your extension service or a real plant nursery for specific advice.
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