Sunday, August 5, 2001		Garden Life

TO get the best out of the trees in your garden is advisable to get rid of irritants and all growth-thwarting features.

Some of the most prominent irritants are the malformed shoots on a mango tree, dried wood caused by ‘die back’ disease in citrus and roses, suckers emerging from below the graft union in fruit trees, water shoots emerging straight upwards with a round brittle stem overgrown leaves and branches or twig pulled by the gardeners (due to unwieldy growth) or broken due to rain or storm.

It is advisable to remove malformed shoots identified as a jumbled mass of confused vegetative or floral growth that becomes brown and then a black mass that keeps hanging on the tree supporting disease-spores and insects. Remove it along with a little healthy portion. This will cause more branches to appear behind the cut end. One or two of these may be malformed. Keep on removing them.

During the rains, the lambs of a tree become more prone to breaking due either to succulent fresh growth or fruit-laden stems that make the head heavy. Whatever be the cause, the broken limbs should immediately be removed. There could be two conditions. Either the limb has been completely detached or is still hanging on to the mother plant. In case of complete detachment the stub left behind should be given a clean, round cut with a pruning saw.

If this is not done, the unevenly broken stub becomes a breeding place for insects, especially The Inderbela species that bores into the stem and causes multi-pronged damage to the tree.

You want an identification of the insect? Its hiding place? And the kind of damage? Well, most of you have seen it.

It bores into the main stem of the tree. At the time of feeding it comes out of the hole and feeds on the main stem bark and forms a web covering of its own excreta under which it keeps hiding and feeding. Remove the web, find the hole and inject a solution of 2.5 gm sevin dissolved in a litre of water. You can use methyl parathion also (4 ml in a litre of water). Do not forget to plug the hole with cotton swab or mud.

This feature was published on July 15, 2001