I haven't been successful with either oils or soapy water, especially juniper scale can be tough to get rid of because oils can and will damage the foliage.
Scale and mealy bugs are the only reason I poses systemic insecticides, and they're the only target I use systemics for.
A closed off spray cabinet made from a plastic container, put the plant in, spray, lid on, wait 45 minutes, take the lid off. Very little environmental damage.
A good system like
@sorce mentions only works if there is an entire system present. Yellowstone
without wolves is an entirely different system than it is
with wolves. Our backyards, especially in old places like Europe, have no balance. There's blooms and extinction, that's it. To create a balance, there have to be both prey and predators. The prey shows up first, as always. But if the predators never show because they have no prey on their migratory path, or simply because the location is fenced, it'll become an issue. A predator that has nowhere to go, will go hungry and die.
If the prey is allowed to keep multiplying without selective pressure for the environment, the prey will eat the land bare for themselves and their offspring. Much like what happened in the
Oostvaardersplassen
If we dive deep into the balance/antibalance system, and we'd adhere to it from the actual starting point.. Then we wouldn't be getting more plants. No added plants means no tipping of the balance, which means no more bug blooms, which means no more predators needed. That's not mental gymnastics. It's rather plain and simple. But try telling people that.. I wouldn't land well.
So we tip the scale one way, now we'll have to tip it back a little. That's balance too. And after some fiddling, the system will start rebalancing itself.
I haven't had to use systemic insecticides in 350-400 days or so. But since there's a fungus die-off due to drought in my backyard, I reckon this isn't going to be a nice year. Ants have retreated, aphids are less present, even the lawn mushrooms haven't made their fairy cicles yet. It'll be spider mite galore for the first time.
How does one find balance in that? 5+ weeks of drought, while these months should be the wettest of the year.
