The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-06-21
BLIGHT TO APPLE TREES.
Inspector Sorensen Calls Attention to
the Aphis.
To the Editor of The Herald:

To the Editor of The Herald:
Would you kindly draw the attention
of the orchard owners and others to
their apple trees, which are now, in
many Instances, beginning to be COW
cred with a whitish wool or cotton
looking stuff? II anyone will blow that
woody or cotton stuff away, he will find
whole nest of living creatures under
meath, clustering together in masses,
more or less dense, each insect small,
but well-fed bedbug, reddish-brown in
color. This is the woody aphiS," or
what is called in Europe the American
blight. They are coming up from the
roots and also Matching from eggs laid
in the creVices, mostly where an injury
to a tree has taken place, or where a
branch has been sawed off. The time
to attend to them is now, as in another
few days, or d week at most, they will
have made their way into the foliage,
and then il Will be nearly impossible to
clean them off, except at a very, very
great expense. Now is the time to at
tend to them, by washing or scrubbing
all such white spots with a strong kerr
osene emulsion, about one part of coal
oil to five parts of water but this
strength must only be used on the
stem and heavy, rough branches, and
not on the tender twigs or foliage,
which it would injure, and, in most in
stances. kill.
If the aphis have already gone into
the foliage of the tree, they should be
SPRAYED with a diluted kerosene emui-
sion, say of one part coal oil to fifteen
parts water. 1t must always be remem-
bered that the coal oil must be cut or
made into kind of soft soap first, be-
fore trying to mix it with water, or
the oil and water will separate This
cutting of the oil is best done for small
quantities with half a gallon of boiling
milk to one gallon of coal oil, or with
half a gallon of milk that will not stand
boiling, by adding a half pint of vine
gar and one gallon coal oil, and pump
it back and forward in the same vessel
until a soft soap is formed.
For larger quantities soap water:
One pound Of hard soap mot resin)'
boiled to two gallons of water, and
mixed with four gallons of coal oil, is
the proper quantity, but it works slower
and is much harder to mix.
In this matter all families having
apple trees subject to this white cotton
stuff woody aphis,' should remember
that by loosening the ground for foot
all around each tree and pouring all the
soap SudS and other washing Slush
around the roots of their apple trees.
taking turn about from one tree to an
other after the washing is DONE so |
each tree would get bucketful or two, |
according to its age-say five-year- old |
tree getting one bucketful of strong |
soap sudS and a twelve-vear- apple |
tree getting two or three bucketsful of |
soap suds every month or five weeks. |
il would kill off the most of these /
woody aphis" if the stem of the tree
was looked after at the same time
Tobacco dust or refuse tobacco dug
IN around the roots of the apple tree is
also an excellent medicine for them
The injury of the woody aphis" to
the apple tree consists in this, that it
makes the tree useless for fruit raising,
as the strength that should go to make
he tree healthy and vigorous, goes to
make noxious and filthy insects.
JOHN p. SORRENSEN.
County Fruit Tree Inspector