Hi Natt..
Oh, those darn scale!!
Scale secrete honeydew which attract ants.

Are ants living in the soil or on leaves?
You have two options..the first is to repot in fresh soil and repotted in scrubbed/clean containers. This includes, setting citrus outdoors, and hosing leaves..
Second is hosing leaves and flushing soil. With a hose.
When soil is watered, especially with forced spray, insects tend to climb upwards, attempting escape. You can help by shooshing them out of the pot.
It'll take time..turn off water..wait. you'll see the little buggers..wipe off and away from your tree. Repeat.

You're right, sprays take time to work.
I'm unfamilar with Organocide..do directions/instructions state the time it takes to work?
If by chance it doesn't do the job, please try Fish Emulsion.
Like you, I do not use chemicals. I ordered an olive tree, and lo and behold, it arrived scale infested.
It was then I remembered a woman who owns a citrus nursery told me she used FE to prevent and kill scale. I phoned her for dossage. 1 capful per 16oz or so sprayer of water. After one spray, all were gone, I did it a second time for good measure..this happened a little over 4 yrs.
Every autumn, before plants are brought indoors, my plants are sprayed with FE and a few other things to prevent other insects. No scale.
Olive is alive and well, and bug-free.

BTW, insects find hiding places. When you clean, no matter how you go about it, wipe top and bottom leaves, stems and trunk. Good luck, Toni

nattayam, you are correct that it will take some time to get rid of your scale infestation. You've purchased a pretty good product and I would stick with it, following the directions carefully.

I would not repot your plant at this time. Ants are relatively easy to get rid of with the use of an organic ant bait. Whether they are climbing into your plant just to take advantage of the scale's honey-dew or have built a miner colony inside the containers, you can sprinkle a bit of the product on the surface of the potting medium and just be patient. Are these fire ants, by any chance?

Look for ant bait products containing the organic substance Spinosad as the active ingredient. Several companies are now putting out their own name brand. It will be a granulated material that the ants will take into their chambers. After a few short days, the colony will be gone.

Just a note....after applying your Organocide, do not rinse it off with soapy water. Let the oils do their job of smothering the eggs and tiny crawlers that have surely remained. Also, the adult scale do not live forever, though their 'shells' may remain on the plant just in order to frustrate you.

Just a though here, and I might be way off base but would a spray made of aged coffee-grounds work on citrus as well as it's worked on my cardboard palms and bamboo?

Here is a link that might be useful: Coffee

BTW, if you decide to try the coffee "tea" put 1-2lbs of the grounds in a stocking and seep in 10 gallons of water for 4-5 days. Strain into a garden sprayer to use for application...has worked really well for me for scale and mealy bugs. Shelf-life is short though, about 30 days so you'll have to make a fresh batch for new outbreaks or preventative use.

Tom, I've never heard of coffee ground to kill off scale, but take interest learning organic ways to keep plants healthy and pest free.
Did your cardboard palm (cycad) and bamboos have scale?
I'm a tea drinker, would tea do the job? Actually, I'm satisfied using Fish Emulsion to rid scale, but coffee/tea/ tea might help acidify soils that prefer low ph. So, my question is, would tea work? If so, which would be better, herbal or regular?
Thanks for the tip..might as well use recycled grounds intead of tossing them in the trash. Toni

The link included has great photos of citrus insects including scale .
They recommend NOT using pesticides .
I was surprised to read not to use oil in the Fall .
Citrus are a real challenge to grow all year round .
Good luck with the scale and ants .

Here is a link that might be useful: Control of Insects, Mites and Diseases of Florida's Dooryard Citrus Trees

My cardboard palm had scale, the bamboo had mealybugs, and the coffee-ground tea has worked well for both. I was hoping to hear from someone here as to whether they had used this on citrus and considered it safe and effective...please be aware I'm a newbie with citrus, unlike gatromom ;-)

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your advice. I continue to spray with organocide. I used garden hose to hose the leaves and flush the soil. They look better. less ants still have some left though.

Do we have to spray citrus regularly to protect all insects in the future? I really like the idea of coffee ground. I will try this method soon.

I have another question... I'm not sure wheter should I create another post or not. I have a potted honey mandarin tree(dwarf, about 3 ft tall). This past summer, it had about 10 fruits. They looked pretty normal but when we cut them in half, we found out that half of the fruit had dry pulps and another half had juicy pulps. This happened to all 10 oranges. I don't know what cause this? less water?

I have tried all of the "solutions" for scale. The single solution that worked was using a fruit tree spray combo of neem and pyrethrins. Three treatments and my orange tree went from 90% dead to growing strong with no remaining scale. Same thing on an umbrella plant, and a number of orchids.

Before you say "it was the neem" it wasnt. I have tried neem over and over and it certainly helps but some of those buggers always live. It is the combo of the two, kills em dead.

I posted this question on another thread, so my apologies if this seems repetitive and annoying- but I have a bottle of fish emulsion meant to be used as a fertilizer. Would I use this same FE to spray on the plants as an insecticide?
What would happen if I mixed FE with a little Neem Oil? Overkill?

Where do you find this neem/pyrithrin combo spray?

I will add to that question for you so this thread won't be lost for your answer pkapeckopickldpepprz, where do you get that type of spray?