STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 23 



leaves in August, if there are healthy leaves around the bud. 

 Protection of the foliage from disease is fully as important as 

 protection of the fruit. In Virginia many neglected apple trees 

 are defoliated by the cedar rust. Part of the life of this disease 

 is passed on the red cedar and part on the apple, where it dis- 

 figures both leaves and fruit. Spraying helps if done at exactly 

 the right time, but the most effective method is to cut down all 

 the cedars within half a mile of the orchard. Stringent meas- 

 ures have been taken in the apple sections of Virginia to cut 

 down all the red cedars in the neighborhood. At Winchester, 

 Virginia, the banks refused to loan money to any man who had 

 red cedars on his place which were a menace to neighboring 

 orchards. They justified themselves in this way : "Apple grow- 

 ing is the chief industry of this county. We get our money 

 from the men who grow apples. If we are going to stand in the 

 way of their making money from apples, we do not care to 

 accommodate you." We now have a state law under which any 

 apple grower whose neighbor has red cedar trees that are injur- 

 ing his orchard he can get them cut down by protesting to the 

 proper authorities. It has been declared constitutiv^nal, and is 

 working to the interest of the apple industry. 



Some of you may have nursery stock come with the w^oolly 

 aphis and crown gall upon the roots. These have proved to 

 be very serious pests in Virginia. Right in the prime of their 

 life, as seems to us, the trees begin to die and on pulling them up 

 we find it due to woolly aphis or crown gall that was on the 

 nursery stock when it was planted. If you do not have, you 

 should have, very strict regulatory measures concerning these 

 pests. 



There are some apple diseases in Virginia which we cannot 

 control by spraying: This "brown spot" is one. It attacks the 

 York Imperial most of all, and is apparently the same as your 

 "Baldwin spot." This year I presume we lost 30 pei cent of No. 

 I York Imperial apples by the brown spot. It is what botanists 

 call a physiological disease, which means that it is a case of 

 plant indigestion. Apparently it is associated with an excess 

 of nitrogen in the soil or an excessive vegetative growth of the 

 tree. We find spot most abundant on young trees that are 

 growing very fast. We also find it in orchards that are heavily 

 fertilized, and on trees that are not heavily loaded. It helps to 

 control the spot on the York to grow the trees slowly, and not 



