Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is one of the only things I have found that will consistently kill scale bugs IF you use it correctly, and by that I mean that you must be able to put your plant in the shade.
What the label doesn't tell you (and what I had to learn by trial and error) is that this pesticide degrades pretty fast in direct sunlight. The spray itself does nothing to the scales. It has to be absorbed by the plant through the leaves, incorporated into the plant's tissues, and then sucked out again by the scale to kill the scale. Especially in woody plants (such as trees) this process takes a while, and the pesticide decomposes too fast if the plant is in direct sunlight for any significant part of the day.
IF you can accommodate this requirement, this product is amazing! But if your plants are planted in the ground in the open with no cover, I don't know how well it would function.
Patience is also required - as I said, the spray does nothing directly to the scale. To kill the soft brown scale on my trees (which are in containers and which could therefore be moved under the overhang where they are in shade all day) I had to spray them once a week, on the dot, for 5 weeks. For 2 weeks, nothing happened, but on week 3 the scales started to change from their normal translucent brown to a darker, more unhealthy color, and on week 4 they started to turn flaky and dry. I gave the trees one more week of treatment just to be sure before putting them back in the sunlight, and then the next rainstorm washed the dead scale right off the tree.
You need to be sure to spray all parts of the plant, especially the undersides of the leaves, so that the pesticide is absorbed. The big jug with the pull-sprayer is way, way more convenient for this than the smaller bottle with the trigger sprayer, so if your plants are big (trees for instance) you will want to take that into consideration.
I've also used this on indoor houseplants, and it only takes 2 weeks to kill scale - soft plants move the poison through their system faster than trees, and keeping houseplants out of direct sunlight for a couple of weeks is a cinch. I give them a third week of treatment, again just to be sure.
It says that this product kills on contact, but I've never noticed contact killing with it. I've sprayed spiders right and left with it on an incidental basis while spraying the trees, and the same spiders are still there the following week. I've sprayed ants attracted by the scale honeydew as well, and they seem to show no ill effects. But hey, there are a thousand contact-kill poisons, but none of those kill scale!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Ortho Max Flower Fruit & Vegetable Insect Killer Pull 'N Spray 1.33-Gallon 0331210
Ortho, 1.33 Gallon, Ready To Use, Ortho Max Flower, Fruit & Vegetable Insect Killer, New Exclusive Formula, 0.006% Acetamiprid, Low Toxicity To Bees, Faster Plant Absorption, Faster Kill, Contact & Systemic Insect Killer Kills 100+ Insects On Contact, 3 Week Residual Control.
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