New York Agrictjltfeal Experiment Station. 19 



early stages of their growth and emphasizes the importance of 

 doing the thinning very early in the season. 



Fertilizers for forcing lettuce. — Complete commercial fertil- 

 izers which differ from each other only in material from which 

 the supply of nitrogen is secured are being tried both alone and in 

 combination with varying proportions of stable manure, on soils 

 for forcing lettuce. Each formula is tried with head lettuce and 

 with loose lettuce, both on medium heavy clay loam and on very 

 light sandy loam. The object of this work is to throw some light 

 on the question as to whether, in the forcing of lettuce, com- 

 mercial fertilizers may be profitably substituted either wholly or 

 in part for stable manure. It is desirable that the results which 

 have been thus far obtained should receive further confirmation 

 before being published. 



Treatment for gooseberry mildew. — Because of the destructive 

 character of gooseberry mildew and the economic importance of 

 this disease in all parts of America where gooseberries are culti- 

 vated, experiments have been conducted for the purpose of treat- 

 in the disease on a commercial scale. Potassium sulphide has 

 been compared with other fungicides for this purpose and very 

 early treatments have been compared with later treatments so as 

 to learn if possible just when to spray and what to spray with in 

 order to hold the mildew in check most successfully. This par- 

 ticular line of investigation has been in progress since 1897. The 

 results, as set forth in Bulletin 161, show that the use of potas- 

 sium sulphide has been followed with better success than the use 

 of Bordeaux mixture, lysol or formalin. Bordeaux mixture 

 proved comparatively useless; formalin was somewhat more ef- 

 fective and lysol gave promising results, ranking next to the 

 potassium sulphide. Very early spraying generally gave better 

 results than when the first treatment was made medium early or 

 late. Winter treatment was tested only one season. It did not 

 give sufficient advantage to justify the expense of making it. 



Apple canker. — A disease of apple tree limbs has done and is 



