orange tree blight

Hillel starts with ...
any help in identifying and treating this organically will be greatly appreciated.

Pictures - Click to enlarge
Picture: 1

brad16 says...
It is scale, but not mealy bug. I don't know a common name for it apart from citrus scale.

I've had this problem and I've only ever had it on orange trees, where other citrus around (even just a couple of metres from an affected tree) were not affected.

I treated mine with white oil, but that was petroleum based, so that doesn't tick your 'organic' request.

Try 'ECO-Oil'. The usual treatment is not to poison them, but to smother them. It's the oily base that pretty much suffocates them to death. Another remedy I've heard of is soapy water. The water dries up and leaves a soapy residue, which is what smothers them. I haven't tried soapy water, only heard of it.

The way this pest operates is by climbing the trunk from the soil, go up along the branches and then they permanently settle in one place and cover themselves with a waxy coating to protect themselves. They are best affected when they are juvenile and mobile, before they develop their waxy coating.

Spray the entire tree and make sure the trunk and branches are well covered. Keep this up on a regular basis to prevent new generations becoming established. The remedy is appears slow because the remains of the existing ones don't go away and they make it difficult to see happy progress. Your harvest isn't lost, but the fruit will ripen 'ugly' with them on it, so commercially 'yuk', but still good fruit inside.

The plus side is the tree is still healthy and once you get on top of them the tree goes on 'business as usual'.

The last tree I treated was the season before last. There are still remnants of the scale in some places (because they don't drop off when dead) but new growth is free of any new infestation.

If I do have the problem again, I'll be using 'ECO-Oil'.