Winter Meeting. 287 



"ij 



advisable to plan the experiments for the coming season so as to 

 spray for Apple Scab and Codling Aloth early in the season, giving 

 one spraying just before the trees bud out, and another after the blos- 

 soms fall, and if the weather is we,t another in about a week or ten 

 days; and then not begin the work for bitter rot until about July ist, 

 as this disease does not begin to spread until the warm weather of 

 summer. This .season there was no rapid development of bitter rot 

 until in August. I believe that this is a better plan than it would be 

 to carry the sprayings on through June, as it will lessen the sprayings 

 somewhat and still give good results. 



The formula that we used this season was five pounds of copper 

 sulphate, and five pounds of fresh lime, to fifty gallons of water. 



Regarding the injury to the different varieties, the injury done 

 was practically confined to the Ben Davis variety, except that the 

 Huntsman was injured to some extent in one orchard. Willow Twig, 

 Winesap and Smith's Cider were not injured bv the spray at all. It 

 seems that the Ben Davis apple is more susceptible to this injurv than 

 the other varieties. 



As we have been discussing this subject somewhat informallv I 

 would like to ask that any one present interested in spraying work 

 would ask any questions that may occur to them, and also bring up 

 qny phase of the subject that may be of interest in their particular 

 section. 



A question: What was the nature of the injury? 



Simply roughened .the surface of the apples. There is no question 

 about this, because on the unsprayed plots the apples were more highly 

 colored and there was no rust on the surface at all. It has also been 

 suggested that it was possibly due to the strength of the mixture used. 

 I am inclined to think that if we had used a little more lime and less of 

 copper sulphate the same damage would not have been done. How- 

 ever, a prominent fruit grower at Farmington, Mo., told me the other 

 day that he had used three pounds of sulphate of copper and six pounds 

 of lime, and his apples were also injured by rusting caused bv the 

 spray. In the orchard belonging to Mr. Henry Scholten, where we 

 carried on co-operative spraying experiments, in a part of the orchard 

 more Hme was added to the mixture, and it was found that the injury 

 was less where the additional lime was used, nevertheless there was 

 some injur}- to the fruit th'ere. 



A question : Is it a fact that the cuticle on the injured apple is 

 thinner than on other apples not injured by the rust? 



I am of the opinion that this is a fact. As stated before the injury 

 was confined principally to the Ben Davis variet}^ while other varie- 



