February, 191 5 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



29 



for dessert purposes, the following list 

 in their season is hard to beat : 



Gravenstein — September - November. 



Wealthy — October-December. 



Wagner — November-January. 



ber-January. 



Grim's Golden — January-March. Also 

 the Mcintosh. 



The Great Spy answers for the rest 

 of the season. We are going to raise 



Bishop Pippin or Bellefleur — Decem- more apples than ever. 



Cherry Fruit Flics* 



Prof. L. Caesar, Provincial Entom»Iogist, O.A.C 



OUR experiments, continued over two 

 years, have shown us that cherry 

 fruit flies can be controlled in a re- 

 markably easy and cheap way by poison- 

 ing the flies before they can lay their 

 eggs. It is fortunate that this is so be- 

 cause no other method seems to give any 

 good results; for instance, cultivation is 

 useless as a control measure. The fol- 

 lowing then are the steps necessary for 

 success in destroying the pest : 



First, Cut down and burn any cherry 

 trees near the orchard that are growing 

 wild or the fruit of which is not worth 

 picking. This is to prevent the flies 

 from breeding in these. 



Second, Watch for the first signs of 

 the flies on the leaves. This will be 

 about a week before the Early Rich- 

 monds begin to color, or about June 7th, 

 and, as soon as any are seen, spray all 

 the trees whether sour or sweet, early 

 or late (unless they are very early) with 

 two and one-half or three pounds arsen- 

 ate of lead (paste form) to forty gallons 

 of water sweetened with one gallon, or 

 nearly one gallons, of cheap molasses. 

 Apply the spray to the under side of the 

 leaves and try to cover most of these. 

 Move the rod quickly, as there is no need 

 of making the spray drip. Forty gal- 

 lons should cover both sides of about 

 fifty moderately large trees. Spray, if 

 possible, both sides the same day. In 

 about ten or twelve days give all the 

 Montmorency, Morello, and other lates 

 sour and sweet cherries another appli- 

 cation of the same mixture, omitting this 

 time the early varieties, as these will be 

 getting too ripe. If the spray has been 

 applied to the under surface of the leaves 

 both times, it will stand a good deal of 

 rain without all washing off, but if sev- 

 eral heavy rains should happen to come 

 and remove most of it, it would be wise 

 to give another application. We did 

 not, however, find this necessary either 

 in 1913 or 1914. 



POINTS TO KEEP IN SQND 



One thorough application will not 

 suffice for the first year. 



It is of the utmost importance to make 

 the first application early, just as soon as 

 the first flies appear, or about the end 

 of the first week in June in the Niagara 

 district. The flies have to be killed be 

 fore the eggs are laid, and if the applica- 



•Extract from a paper read at the last aJinual 

 oanvention of the Nova Scotia Fralt Growers' 

 Aseoclatlon. 



Guelpk 



tion is delayed, success will not be ob- 

 tained. 



It is often wise the first time to spray 

 plums, pears, or other trees in among 

 the cherries, because the flies rest and 

 feed on the leaves of these, especially if 

 they are on the sunny side of the orchard 

 and can be killed there as readily as on 

 the cherries. 



Try to get your neighbor to cooperate 

 with you if his orchard is near yours, 

 because the flies move about consider- 

 ably. 



If the work is done well the pest 

 should be completely destroyed in the 

 orchard in two years, and the sprayings 

 may then be omitted for some years uni- 

 til it is found to have come in again 

 from other orchards. 



In 1913 Mr. G. J. Spencer and I spray- 

 ed one of the worst infested Montmor- 

 ency orchards in the province. Two ap- 

 plications were given with the mixture 

 mentioned at the times stated. As a 

 result, neither we nor the pickers found 

 a single wormy cherry on the hundred 

 trees treated, nor on the few neighbor- 

 ing check trees. The flies from these 

 had flown over to the sprayed trees and 

 been killed. A neighboring orchard, a 

 quarter of a mile away, was so badly in- 

 fested that most of the Montmorencies 

 were not picked. 



In another orchard of over one hun- 

 dred trees we sprayed half the trees and 

 left half not sprayed. The result was 

 that on the sprayed half from one to 

 thirteen per cent, were wormy, on the 

 unsprayed from ten to forty per cent. 

 This showed that the spraying helped 

 greatly, but it also showed that the flies 

 from the unsprayed half had, when ready 

 to lay eggs, flown over and deposited 

 in the sprayed trees. 



In 1914 the worst two orchards we 

 had seen the previous year were chosen. 

 Each had over one hundred and fifty 

 trees, most of them late sour varieties. 

 These had been so badly infested in 1913 

 that very few cherries in either had been 

 picked, hence there were numerous flies 

 to infest them this year. Two applica- 

 tions were given to each. In one of the 

 orchards the sweetening was left out for 

 the second application. 



In both cases the results were about 

 ideal : The pickers found no wormy cher- 

 ries. My assistant, Mr. Shipton, and 

 I in one orchard found about two dozen 

 wormy cherries on May Duke and Mor- 

 ello, but none on the Montmorency. In 

 the other orchard neither of us found 

 any, but when the cherries were being 

 stored by the owner's wife, a very rare 

 one contained a maggot. So few were 

 these that they would not amount to 

 more than one in a basket, which was 

 less than one-third of one per cent. 

 Neighboring check orchards had from 

 forty to ninety-nine per cent, wormy. 

 It was, therefore, clearly proved that in 

 even the worst infested orchards almost 

 every fly could be killed by the poison. 



OONOLUSION 



We feel perfect confidence in recom- 

 mending every cherry grower who has 

 found any of these maggots in his cher- 



• '^?^ jft 



'%^, 







A power spray motor at work witu oue man a 



Ontario, 



bove and one on the ground in a St. Thomae, 

 orchard 



