Scale and rust versus Astrophytum. Has anyone else had the idea that you maybe over-fertilized your plants? It’s a working theory over here in my post-Scale🤞mad science lab, as I only recently decided to use fertilizer. Well, a theory based on the first results when looking up Scale about fertilizer often being a potential cause. Nitrogen levels, right? Note also that the plants affected by Scale in my collection are the meaty, round ones. Scale did not care for Lithops. It wanted fat Mammillaria and juicy echinopsis. My worries at the old house were over fruit flies and aphids until I stopped re-homing spiders (a polite way to say “vacuum the ceiling”). There are 0 spiders in my new place, and residents here feel the need to post about hypothetical spiders in a Facebook group. I did the whole de-louse and scrub with a hose (kitchen sink) on several cactus. It feels really strange to treat a plant with such temporary violence (I can’t think of a better word). I hate Scale.
