June. '15] 



LEONARD: CONTROL OF TARNISHED PLANT-BUG 



367 



Because of the favorable results obtained in Maryland and Virginia 

 it was deemed ad\dsable to give this method of pruning the trees a 

 trial. On July 29, injured trees in three rows were treated as follows: 



Row a. Forty trees were pruned by cutting off the injured leader 

 down to the first healthy lateral below it. Three or four of the other 

 top laterals were then headed in 5 or 6 inches in order to throw most of 

 the growth into the one chosen to continue the upward growth of 

 the tree. 



Row h. Fifty-seven trees in this row were similarly pruned except 

 that about ten of the higher laterals on each tree were headed in. 



Row c. Twenty-five trees were pruned in the same manner as were 

 those in row b but in addition the lower laterals were cut off entirely 

 to a height of about twenty inches. It is the practice in this nursery 

 to trim off the lower laterals some time in August or later in the season, 

 depending somewhat upon the condition of growth of the trees and the 

 availability of labor. This last method was, therefore, simply the 

 regular fall pruning made at an earlier date. 



On November 9 the peach blocks were visited and the pruned trees 

 examined. The results were, on the whole, unsatisfactory. The 

 laterals of all the peach trees in the nursery had made good growth 

 since they were last examined on July 29, due to plentiful rains in 

 August. The weather during June and July had been extremely 

 dry. However, no difference could be noticed between the amount 

 of growth made by the pruned trees in rows a and h and the unpruned 

 trees about them. In row^ c three or four of the pruned trees had 

 practically outgrown the injury, these, however, constitute only about 

 12 per cent of the trees treated in this manner. 



The early pruning of the lower laterals at such time as most of the 

 tarnished plant-bugs will have left the peach blocks seems to give 

 promise of aiding the trees to outgrow the injury. Much depends, 

 however, on the condition of the weather and the amount of growth the 

 trees make after being pruned. Xo further conclusions can be drawn 

 as to the exact value of this operation until it has been tried out on 

 a much larger scale. 



Literature Cited 



Back, E. A., and Price, W. J., 1912. Stop-back of peach. Journal of Economic 

 Entomology, 5:329-334. 



Crosby, C. R., and Leonard, M. D., 1914. The tarnished plant-bug. Cornell 

 University Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 346:461-526. 



Phillips, J. L., 1906. Notes on thrips, disbudding insect, or stop-back of peach, 

 as observed in the nurseries of Virgioia. Virginia State Entomologist and Plant 

 Pathologist Report 5 for 1904-1905:50-61. 



Quaintance, a. L., 1912. The peach-bud mite. United States Bureau of Ento- 

 mology, Bulletin 97:6:103-114. 



