PRUNING, INSECTS AND FERTILIZING. 117 



of which creoleum is a compound. The object of the paint 

 was to make the lime wash adhere better. I then kept close 

 watch on the young peaches and plums for the half-moon cut 

 of the curculio and the round puncture of the gouger, which 

 usually begin their work when the fruit is about as big as a 

 large green pea, never before that. Finally, seeing what 

 looked like a gouger's mark, I strained my wash, stirring well 

 through a thin cheese-cloth, and sprayed all my peach and 

 plum trees, aiming to get it on the fruit especially. I could 

 smell the creoleum (carbolic acid would doubtless have done 

 as well) very strong, and the young peaches and plums showed 

 the white plainly. Of course this treatment was a bluff en- 

 tirely, not being poisonous, but the appeal to the eye and 

 nose was most effective, for a daily examination showed no 

 punctures of any kind ; but when the fruit was about the size 

 of a large marble or small hickory-nut, I sprayed a second 

 time. Though we had several rains, the wash adhered well, 

 some little showing on the apricots when ripe, though not on 

 any of the later fruit. That was all I did, and, though all 

 my neighbors had their fruit badly damaged, I never found 

 a wormy peach or plum. Possibly a white wash with more 

 acid might have been effective with one application. This 

 season I will conduct more careful experiments, and hope all 

 fruit-growers will do the same. The same treatment applied 

 while apple trees are in blossom should be equally effective 

 against the codling-moth. 



As to fertilizers for the orchard, some good brand should 

 be used freely the first year it is put to grass, unless the 

 ground is naturally rich, for all plowed and cultivated trees 

 are without any true surface-root system. Of course, the grass 

 will quickly fill the upper unoccupied layer of the soil, thus 

 robbing the tree roots below, the first season. That is the 

 trying time on all old or young cultivated orchards put to sod, 

 until the trees take full possession of the entire surface with 

 their fine hair roots, as all forest trees do. If a serious 

 drought occurs at that time, by all means thin the fruit se- 

 verely, especially on trees that were planted with long roots. 

 In such cases, those that were close root-pruned when set 



