New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 17 



Bpray pumps and mixtures. — The constant demand for elemen- 

 tary instruction concerning the use of spray mixtures and spray 

 pumps made it necessary to make further tests of apparatus and 

 revise former instructions so as to include the most recent devel- 

 opments in this line. This has been done by Mr. Paddock 

 ^nd the results are given in Bulletin 121 on Spray Pumps «nd 

 Spraying. 



Effect of wood ashes upon apple scab. — For five years one of the 

 apple orchards at the Station has been devoted to an investiga- 

 tion of the question whether fertilizing the soil liberally with 

 wood ashes may make the apples more resistant to the scab. 

 The results in this investigation are set forth in a bulletin on this 

 subject in which it is shown that, with the conditions under 

 which this investigation was made, immunity from apple scab 

 is not at all increased by liberal applications of hard-wood ashes 

 to the soil. 



Forcing tomatoes. — Methods of training and benching tomatoes 

 in the forcing house are discussed in Bulletin 125. The conclu- 

 sion is reached that, at least in this climate, single stem training 

 is clearly superior to three stem training in forcing tomatoes. 

 Plunging small pots containing the young tomato plants in the 

 soil of the bench to see whether confining the roots thus would 

 bring the plants into beai'ing earlier or increase their productive- 

 ness, showed that practically nothing was gained by this treat- 

 ment and when used with three stem training it was a detriment. 



Varieties of fruit at the Station. — But two bulletins have been 

 prepared in 1897 on the varieties of fruit which are growing at 

 tMs Station. These are Bulletins 127 on Strawberries and 128 

 on Raspberries, Blackberries and Dewberries, both by Mr. Pad- 

 dock. 



The following shows the number of varieties of commonly 

 cultivated fruits in the Station collection at the close of 1897, not 

 including plants which were received in the fall of 1897 nor those 

 currants and gooseberries which are grown here simply to illus- 

 trate the species to which they belong: 



2 



