About the last of June pupation takes place and in about ten days the
moth emerges. The eggs are then layed along the midribs of the leaves
and hatch in about fifteen days. The newly hatched larvae become leaf
miners during August, and migrate to the branches again in the fall
where they pass the winter. These leaf and bud eating insects can be
destroyed by applying a poison to the buds before they open and again
later to the opening leaf and flower buds.
5. CURCULIO BEETLES pass the winter under leaves and grass. In the
spring they feed on the blossoms and the tender leaves. As soon as the
young fruits are formed the female deposits her eggs in a puncture
made just inside a short, crescent-shaped cut in the little apple. The
eggs soon hatch and the young grubs burrow into the fruit to the core
where they remain two or three weeks, or until full grown. The larvae
then bore their way out of the fruit and drop to the soil where they
pupate. The earliest of the beetles to emerge again feed on the fruit.
The principal damage from this pest comes from the feeding of the
beetles and the work of the larvae, although the latter is not as bad
in the apple as in the stone fruits. A poison on the young foliage as
soon as the beetles begin to feed is the best method of combating
curculio. Jarring the tree is not as practicable with the apple as it
is with the plum.
6. THE SAN JOSE SCALE, one of our worst apple tree pests, is a sucking
insect extracting the juices of the tree from the trunk, limbs or
branches, or even from the leaves and fruit when it is very abundant.
At first the growth is checked only, but as the insects develop their
work finally results in the death of the part, unless they are
destroyed. The insect winters in an immature condition on the bark
under a grayish, circular, somewhat convex scale about the size of a
pinhead. The young, of which a great many broods are produced, are
soft bodied but soon form a scale. In the early spring small
two-winged insects issue from these scales.
After mating the males die, but the females continue to grow and in
about a month begin the production of living young--minute, yellow,
oval creatures. These young settle on the bark and push their slender
beaks into the plant from which they begin to suck out the sap. In
about twelve days the insects molt and in eight to ten more they
change to pupae, and in from thirty-three to forty days are themselves
bearing young. A single female may give birth to four hundred young in
one season and there are several generations in a season. This great
prolificacy is what makes the scale so serious a pest.
In fighting it every scale must be destroyed or thousands more are
soon born. In order to be able to use a strong enough mixture of lime
and sulphur to destroy them by smothering or choking the spray must be
applied on the dormant wood in the spring or fall or both.
Thoroughness is most essential.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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