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How does one get rid of soft brown scale on a Sarracenia? Mine is a S. purpurea. I know they are sensitive to contamination so I'm afraid to try a spray or a systemic insecticide. On my non-carnivores, I have had good luck with fish emulsion, but I am pretty sure I don't want to spray that on my Sarracenia.

I have tried manually removing the scale. I cut off the pitchers that were most infested in order to thin out the crowns, and then wiped the remaining pitchers down with Q-tips. I went over them on a weekly basis with a 30x lens to remove newly settled scale. I thought they were gone. Winter came and I forced a dormancy, and now have the plant growing again. Both crowns are producing new pitchers and last week I found young settled scale.

Is there any way to get rid of them? This is my 3rd year with this plant. I bought it in one of the "death cubes" from Lowes and turned it into a nice, good-looking, vigorous plant. It is a working plant that eats unwanted bugs, and it has been very good to me. I would like to save it from this scale menace. If it were not a carnivore I would know what to do, but it is and I don't. Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Re pot immediately if you have not already, the scale can be in the soil as well as on the rhizome, if you do repot it, bare root it and use a SOFT toothbrush around the base of the pitchers and CAREFULLY around the growing points if it's bad - sounds extreme, but orchid growers do this on flowers, yes flowers and it works! Now if you are back east, now is NOT a good time to do this, but here along the west coast, and it's a purp (very hardy), I'd say you would be alright - terrariums also. Check all other plants, esp. other Sarracenias to make sure they have not spread. Unfortunately, scale and mealybugs love Sarracenias, among a few others!
 
I have not repotted. I don't think it's a good idea to do it now, as I would have to do it outside and the back porch is covered in snow. All I have is LFS anyway, and that's not what it's in now. The potting medium looks like some kind of peat, but I can tell that there is a sphagnum fraction because a tiny speck of sphagnum keeps growing up in the corner. I really have no idea what this stuff is or how I would get more (or what to use if I can't get more).

---------- Post added at 07:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:11 PM ----------

Many systemic insecticides are safe to use with Sarracenia. If you have deep pockets you can buy biological controls like mealybug destroyers but spending $50-100 for a couple plants seems extravagant to me.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg005
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7408.html

Which systemics would be safe? I currently have dinotefuran and acetamiprid on-hand. I have looked into biological controls for scale but found them to be prohibitively expensive.
 
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