Pest Management

A week from now, I will be in California and will have recently completed a competition in Pest Management at the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) Student Career Days (SCD). Yikes. About a month ago, I knew nothing about pests, and even less about the management of them. Now, however, I have committed to memory a list of 125 plant pests, their common and scientific names, their common host species, control methods, etc...

My very least favorite part about cramming for this competition event has been the ID part. Because, you see, not only do I have to know all of the information about these pests, but I also have to be able to identify them based off of the damage they do or what they look like at any one of their many life stages. Without the ability to identify them, I will absolutely fail. 0%. Maybe even -10 %.

Now, this would not be so miserable for me if it weren't for the Scales. I mean, other things are gross, but the 19 different varieties of scale just push me over the edge.

Scale is a very small insect. It crawls around on plant stems until it finds a nice spot, at which point it sinks its little sucker-tongue into the plant, latches on, and starts sucking.

Once a scale has chosen a home, it starts leaking. Or maybe oozing is a better description. Either way, it excretes a sticky mess of liquid that hardens into a protective shell. At this point, it has become an utterly useless parasite. It just sits sucking away the life of the plant until winter. Then the female scales lay their eggs under their shells, they die, and the eggs live in a nice cozy shell until spring, when they wake up to do the same thing as their nasty parents.

And I have to be able to distinguish between 19 different types of scale. Like Cottony Cushion Scale:










Or Magnolia Scale:












Or, my personal favorite, Wax Scale:










Anyway, I am tired of scale. It's not my favorite thing at all.