WINTER MEETING. 13T 



My experience is that it is necessary to have an all-the-year-round protector. 

 This summer I allowed 400 trees planted this spring to go without wiring. This 

 fall I found 15 choice trees ruined by rabbits and 20 trees stung by the borer-fly. 



While I had found a perfect protector, which would spring out as the tree 

 enlarged, yet I found it somewhat expensive in original cost, and also that it 

 rusted out very soon. The wire, IX'^ feet, cost about 3 cents each tree, and many 

 would rust out in one year and nearly all in two years. So 1 resorted to painting 

 the wire. I saturated and heavily coated the wire cloth with iron-clad painty 

 which brought the cost of the wire up to about 4J cents for each tree, but which 

 once put around the tree would last, as near as I can now judge, from three to five 

 years. 



The medium height for the body of an apple-tree is from 30 inches to three 

 feet. This allows the wire to be raised up about one foot from the ground, so that 

 the lower part of the body can be readily examined for borers, which should be 

 done at least twice each year, preferably in May and October. The wire can also 

 be slipped entirely off the tree and the whole body examined, and then it can be 

 easily replaced by springing it back around the tree. [ have these wires on about 

 2000 trees, and on many of them I have kept them on for five years, and find them 

 an absolutely perfect protection, not only from rabbits, but borers, sun-scald and 

 knocks and bruises in cultivation. 1 only use the wire two feet or 26 inches high. 

 But for expense, 28 or 30 inches would be better. 



The objections to the methods named by Professor Georgeson are that any 

 process of protection which has to be done every fall is almost always neglected, 

 as it involves a large amount of work and is all undone in the spring; and I find 

 also that summer protection is quite as valuable, on account of the harmful influ- 

 ences I have already named as being overcome, as is winter protection against 

 rabbits. 



To avoid the expense of wire, I am now trying a new experiment on 400 trees 

 which I shall know more about when fully tested. £ take gunny-sack doth, 

 also known as burlap, and cut it into strips one foot wide by 28 inches long. These 

 strips arj then tacked along one edge to a narrow strip of wood about the size of 

 a lath, also 28 inches long. 



These are taken to the orchard, the stick set up against the tree and the gunny 

 cloth wrapped around the tree and the other edge tacked to the stick. This takes 

 about five tacks each time. These protectors cost, exclusive of labor, about If- 

 cents each. They serve all the purpose of the wire, can be raised up so that the 

 lower six inches of the tree can be examined for borers, protect the tree from 

 bruises and sun-scald, and the only uncertain point is their durability. I think 

 they will last from two to three years. As any kind of old cloth can be used for 

 this, I hope it is a valuable invention. I recommed it, however, with caution, as I 

 have become very suspicious of new experiments. 



1 would also suggest the extreme importance of examining trees carefully for 

 borers in May when planted, which are in the trees from eggs laid in the nursery 

 during the previous season. It is on account of borers already in the trees that 

 it is most important to have a protector which can be easily removed. If the pro- 

 tectors I have suggested are kept on the trees from the time of planting, they will 

 rarely ever have a borer in them unless they came with the trees from the nursery 

 row. While the trees are properly wrapped with wire or gunny-cloth, the fly can- 

 not get to the body of the tree to deposit its eggs. It will not go down from the 

 top into the wrapper for this purpose, and they rarely sting over six or eight inchea 

 above the ground. 



