Kew York Agricultural Experiment Station. 137 



have iiot considered spraying a very practical nor promising 

 method of preventing tke rust. In the special case of asparagus 

 which has dense as well as very smooth foliage, spraying is a 

 much more difficult task than is the spraying of many other 

 plants. Still another difficulty which some have set forth as a 

 disadvantage in asparagus spraying is the lack of suitable 

 machinery to do the work on a large scale. In addition to the 

 above factors the preliminary work done by Dr. Halsted^^ showed 

 an advantage from spraying of only about 20 per cent, and more 

 recently Dr. Halsted^^ has reported injury to asparagus from 

 spraying. Basing their conclusions upon these results, combined 

 with the difficulties to be overcome, several writers have ques- 

 tioned the advisability and economic value of spraying. 



EXPERIMENTS ON LONG ISLAND, 189&-'99. 



The results given by Dr. Halsted were based upon estimates of 

 the percentages of rusty plants on sprayed plats and on un- 

 sprayed plats, a difficult method in the case of asparagus with 

 its deree foliage. It appears that a much fairer method would 

 be to select a cutting bed which is old enough to be in its prime, 

 and determine whether any difference in yield by weight could 

 be obtained as a result of spraying. Furthermore the persist- 

 ence of the rust each year together with the resultant weakening 

 of the beds and a decreasing yield as shown by the records of the 

 canning factory, called for vigorous measures of some description. 

 Hence in 1898 arrangements were made with Mr. Arthur L. 

 Downs25 of Mattituck, N. Y., to spray a portion of one of his 

 Columbian White asparagus fields. 



As this work was started too late in 1898 to carry out that 

 year all the details required for a complete experiment, a trial 



"N. J. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 129, also Kept. 1898, p. 345. 



"N. J. Agr. Exp. Sta. Kept. 1898, p. 345, also Kept. 1899, p. 410. 



"^At the time, we were conducting some illustrative field work on pickle 

 spi-aying on Mr. Downs' place, hence we had apparatus and materials 

 handy for spraying of asparagus. Furthermore Mr. Downs is a practical 

 and reliable farmer, a graduate of Cornell University, and a man inter- 

 ested in doing good, careful work, especially in experimental lines. 



