It's too crowded in my greenhouse to keep a close eye on every plant but I've been noticing a problem of black scale building up so today I brought out all the plants (had 35F for a low but up to 74F in the afternoon) and sprayed with neem oil.  A few plants were infested much worse than I realized and one plant had mealy bugs or maybe cotton aphids, a new problem for me.  What do others use for control?

 

 

 

I believe the wooly bugs your referring to are good bugs eating the aphids.

Last summer I bought 3 (ebay) fig starters that had some (hard to notice) scale on them twigs.

What later first came to my attention, was some white funny stuff like in your pic,
and ants feeding on them. I first sprayed with neem oil - both ants and fluffy white stuff survived.
After a couple days, I used the heavy artillery - malathion; and within min/hrs, all were dead.

What I am not sure about is if the white stuff were mealy bugs or scale (crawlers)?

Nah, those are probably mealy bugs.  If it's just mealy bugs I use rubbing alcohol and spray it on.  For scale Neem oil is probably better and it should kill your mealy bugs, too. 

2% soap spray. just ordered dr. bronner's pure castile soap. found one scale and a female with eggs. did visual inspection yesterday and today. i haven't found others, but if there is one, there has to be others. heard neem oil doesn't work all that well.

The citrus trees I got from 4Winds last year had scale, which then passed to my mango and guava.  Fingers and neem oil didn't eradicate them, so I dug the trees out of my aquaponic grow bed, took them outside away from the fish, and sprayed them out the wazoo with Sevin, let them sit a day, then sprayed them again.  That was in the spring, and I haven't seen any scale since.

On a related note, early this winter spider mites got a foothold in my greenhouse figs.  Neem oil wasn't enough, so I was going to order predator mites.  But then the polar vortex hit and all the fig leaves fell off, and now I can't see any spider mites, so I'm wondering if I should wait and order the predator mites in the spring.

Mealy bug solutions for orchids...
http://www.aos.org/Default.aspx?id=511

For scale I used horticultural oil mixed with a small bit of malathion for good measure.  Just the horticultural oil may have worked, but I wanted to be sure.  Blasting them off with a hose also works to some degree.  I did an initial treatment and then a followup treatment about a month or so later.  This was last winter.  In the spring I found one scale left...it was "dug in" on the main trunk just below a branch.  Tenacious little bugger.
Jim

Here's an old post from Gardenweb by Pitangadiego!

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fig/msg0113140227394.html

Well, I don't agree with Jon's comments on GW.  Insecticides can be very effective on scale.  I've had some infestations in the past and Sevin is especially very effective (and lists scale as a controlled pest).  Also, my plants are too fragile to be blasting with water and the plants at this time of year are growing too slowly even in my greenhouse to be able to drench them with water.

What's odd is that it's been months since I've seen an ant in my greenhouse even though I've been looking for them.

I've never seen scale on figs outside of the greenhouse (except when I moved these plants temporarily out of the greenhouse).

First time I ever heard of this creature was in another post here, but now, I got serious educating myself. These are pretty nasty bugs, however, seems that the 'scales' visible are already dead, right? and there are many kinds out there also... their larvae is likely what you are seeing with the foamy white spots.. nasty. Here, this article seems helpful. I hope you get rid of them as they will spread to everything.. try ladybugs - these are amazing creature and prey on the nasty bugs.

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7408.html

"...distinguish live scales from dead or parasitized ones by flipping over the female scale body or cover using a sharp tool. The dead scales from previous generations can remain on plants, and sometimes a large proportion of scales are dead or parasitized by natural enemies..."

I don't see any dead scale, just different stages of black scale.  I scraped several off to turn them over, etc.  And I looked back at the white things and they are mealy bugs and some spots that are apparently where mealy bugs had once been feeding (?).

I've read before that introducing ladybugs usually isn't successful and it's also a business that finds its supplies by removing ladybugs from the wild, so I don't really think that's a good thing to do.

HarveyC just wash them one by one with warm water under the sink give the branches and leaves a gentle rub while you wash those buggers away. then spray entire package (the plant branches, leaves and the soil) with heavy Cinnamon tea. in 2-3 cups of warm-hot water add 1 hefty tsp of cinnamon powder and steer. then pass the tea through gauze and use the infusion to spray on the plant and the soil and the pots.

Oh yeah, my wife would just love that!  If the figs come into the house I'm pretty sure I'll be moving out of the house.