Norwich bulletin., 1922-04-12
Spraying Fruit Trees.

Mir. Editor: One of the readers of The Bulletin has asked me to write to you relative to the spraying of fruit trees. To do this subject justice 1t will be neces- sary to write several letters. This is the first of the series.
 It was possible two generations ago to produce good apples without spraying. lessening in the number of insectivorous birds because of so many wandering cats and dogs, and secondly because of inn portation from all parts of the world of
 numerous sorts of shrubs and trees. With these inportafions have come all the ills (7e trust) that the apple falls heir to. At present it is a difficult thing for an apple tree to remain alive, to say | nothing of it's bearing a crop of apples. The enemies of the apple may be di- vided into four groups:
 Fungi of various varieties. Misunderstanding insects, and lice. 3-The larvae of moths that eat the foliage.
 4-The larvae of beetles, moths and l fiies that eat the immature fruit. It is easy to see that to meet all these | pests in battle one must use weapons
 suitable to the enemy in question. Tc meet them all successfully one must
 spray nearly every month of the year and at times as frequently as every 1 fortnight Fortunately there are sprays
 which are two-fold in their actions ant
 serve to destroy more than one variety
 of pest.
 All the fungi must be met by the use i of sprays which are distinctive in theil nature. Mods, rots and such low form: | of plant life are destroyed by certain chemicals which are not necessarily de l c+, fo btC11ar If
 Many of the fungi can be coped witt { in the dormant season-whence the tern
 dormant-spraying. This spraying is don' | while the trees are bare of foliage. I'm
 gain here is that stronger spray cal l be used than could be in case the foliag were present. These strong winte. sprays will also destroy the scale insect which are hibernating under their wax. projections. Some of the plant lice, too are destroyed in the winter egg-stage. Is now rather late for dormant spray ing though it does little injury if tn
 buds have not opened to the extent o
 spreading their tender leaves.
 Two dormant sprays are in general us -lime-sulphur, and the miscTble oil,
 Both these sprays can now be bough
 ready for use after the proper dllutior
 It Is to be understood though that to ge
 results one must follow carefully the al
 rections furnished with these sprays an
 then spray thoroughly Partial spray ing of a tree, or spraying with a lo' pressure is to large extent wasted ls
 bor. Thorough spraying or none is } good rule
 7 One real good winter spraying will dt ) stroy so large a percentage of thos pests wintering on the trees that goo : fruit is almost assured the following ses l son. ) The next spraying most needed Is jul : prior to the coming of the leaves, just z } the buds are swelling. This sprayir , should be fungicidal and also suitable ft plant lice. Nicotine is the proper med 8 cine for plant lice. Killing the lit plant lice as they first appear upon u ! opening buds is like killing the fir ] house flies as they appear in sprin . Killing one is killing thousands or lite . ally millions
 n Plant ice do not harm apples evel T year, but occasionally they are very n a merous and not only greatly injure u Y newly forming branches but distort 2 per cent. of the crop. Apples injur, r by the plant louse are edible and oft