About this product
Scale insects sit under a waxy shell that shrugs off most contact sprays, which is what makes them so persistent and so infuriating. Indoors they breed all year round. Outdoors the problem builds as temperatures and daylight hours climb through spring and summer.
This treatment is sprayed onto the leaves, not watered into the soil, and that makes it different from every other nematode we sell. The mix of Steinernema feltiae and S. carpocapsae is applied as a solution to the affected foliage. The nematodes swim across the film of water on the leaf surface, find their way underneath the scale's shell and kill the insect from inside. The waxy armour that defeats a spray is no defence against something that goes under it.
The temperature must be above 14°C for this to work at all, and it needs to stay there. Below that the nematodes are not active enough to reach the scale before the water film dries.
That water film is the whole mechanism, so it is worth spraying in the evening rather than the morning, keeping the plant out of direct sun, and raising humidity around it if you can. The longer the leaves stay damp, the further the nematodes get. Repeat applications are usually needed, since scale populations overlap generations.
This is a live, perishable product and should be applied as soon as it arrives rather than stored.