Your Own Fruits And Nuts. Part 3
Spraying fruit trees is the most arduous, exacting part of their care. The list of insects, fungi, and bacteria that beset them is interminable. In some years, commercial growers have to spray fifteen or twenty times to save their crops. Home owners can "get by" with an all-purpose fruit spray from the hardware store, but cannot expect presentable yields without putting on, at the right times, a minimum of eight applications for pomes and nine for some stone fruits, using ingredients designed for definite purposes. Fortunately, the chief damage to different fruits is wrought by the same or similar pests, and at about the same times. Thus the moments and types of mandatory sprays can be condensed for thorough-working amateurs, in tabulations as follows:
| Apples, Pears | ||
| Times | Materials | Targets |
| Dormant (buds not yet green) | Dinitro cresol | Aphids |
| Delayed Dormant (budsgreen) | Miscible oil | Scales, mites, red bugs |
| Delayed Dormant plus one week | Captan | Scab |
| Petal-Fall | Lead arsenate plus captan | Codling moth, circulio, leaf roller, scab |
| Petal-Fall plus one week (first cover spray) | Lead arsenate plus captan | Codling moth, circulio, leaf roller, scab, caterpillars |
| Seventeen, 31, and 41 days after Petal-Fall | Lead arsenate plus captan | Codling moth, circulio, leaf roller, scab, caterpillars, sooty blotch, fruit spot |
| Peaches, Nectarines | ||
| Dormant Ferbam Leaf curl (before buds swell) | Ferbam | Leaf curl |
| Pink-bud | Sulfur | Brown rot |
| Blossom | Sulfur | Brown rot |
| Fruit-husk split | Sulfur plus malathion | Brown rot, circulio |
| Ten days after Fruithusk split (first cover spray) | Sulfur plus malathion | Brown rot, circulio, scab |
| Fifteen days later (second cover spray) | Sulfur | Brown rot, scab |
| Ten days later (third cover spray) | Sulfur | Brown rot, scab |
| A week or so later, or just after a heavy rain (two final cover sprays) | Sulfur plus DDT | Brown rot, scab, Japanese beetle, Oriental fruit moth |
| Chebrtes And Plums (also Nut Trees) | ||
| Dormant (before buds swell) | Ferbam | Black knot |
| Fruit-husk split | Ferbam or lead arsenate and captan | Circulio, brown rot, leaf spot |
| Ten days after Fruithusk split | Ferbam or lead arse husk split | Circulio, brown rot, leaf spot |
| When fruit colors | Ferbam or captan | Brown rot, leaf spot |
| Quickly after harvest | Ferbam or captan | Leaf spot |
| Harvest plus 18 days | Ferbam or captan | Leaf spot
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