Sunburn can be prevented in many ways.  The manufactured tree-protectors are good if they are light colored and are kept in place so that the sun does not scald above or below them.  Wrapping spirally with narrow strips of burlap, torn from old grain sacks, from the base to the forking of the branches, is also good.  A very effective and widely used method is to apply a good durable whitewash which may be made of 30 pounds of lime, 4 pounds of tallow and 5 pounds of salt, adding the salt to the water used in slaking the lime, stirring in the tallow while the slaking is in progress and hot, and then adding water to thin the wash so that it will work well with pump or brush.

Gumming of Prune Trees.

I write to ask for information concerning my prune trees.  They are from two to six years old and the gum is exuding from them.  As I notice the branches dying I cut them out, but this doesn’t seem to save the tree.  I would appreciate any information you can give me.

This is a pretty hard matter to diagnose from a distance.  There is a good probability that the trouble is caused by sunburn, a point you could determine on inspection.  Whitewash would be a protection against this and more or less of a cure also.  Furthermore, borers may be the cause, which can be determined by examining the points where the gum exudes, seeing if any wood grains are present.  These borers should be dug out and whitewash applied, which latter also protects against this trouble.  Lastly, your ground may be drying out, which also you can determine and remedy.

Borers in Olive Twigs.

There are quite a number of olive trees in this locality that have something wrong with them.  They make a growth of five or six inches and the center twig dies back, then it sprouts out at the sides and makes another growth in the same way.  This makes a thick bush instead of the tree coming up as it should.

The dying back is caused by a beetle which bores into the twigs.  The twigs above the point where the beetle enters dies and then, of course, buds come out from healthy wood below.  No treatment has been devised against it, though its breeding ground is limited if all dead wood and brush and litter is cleaned up and twigs are cut off below the point of injury whenever the work of the insect is seen.

Raspberry Cane Borer.

Can you tell me what to do for my Loganberries and raspberries?  A small worm got into them in the new growth of wood lost summer, right in the tips of the new growth of wood, and then worked down through the pith of the wood, and as fast as they worked down the can wilted.