151 IiKPORT OF THE BoTAXIST OF TUB 



sarily result from any intentional neglect on the part oF work- 

 men, but from the impossibility of always reaching all parts 

 of a heavy row without drenching ?ome of the foliage so that the 

 liquid will not adhere. In the work for 1899 an outfit was used 

 consisting of a barrel pump fitted with two lead-s of hose and 

 requiring three men and a team to operate successfully. With 

 this equipment three acres is all that can be sprayed in a day if 

 the work be done with any pretense of thoroughness. Further- 

 more it was found that for full-growm, heavy asparagus between 

 250 and 300 gallons of Bordeaux mixture was required per acre, 

 when applied by hand machinery. 



The expense is great in hand spraying, as a team and three men 

 are required to spray three acres per day; and the labor involved 

 in handling nearly 1,000 gallons of liquid is not slight. The treat- 

 ment must be repeated once a week for four or five weeks or 

 oftener while the aisparagus is growing rapidly; surely not an 

 encouraging prospect for aspaiagus growers who have five acres 

 and upwards, and especially for those who grow from forty to 

 sixty acres. In fact, with unfavorable weather, those with five 

 or six acres would need to devote the major portion of their time 

 to aisparagus spraying, with a bare possibility of saving 40 per ct. 

 of the crop. 



The above factors, combined with the apparent success of our 

 work in the fall of 1898 and of 1899, led to the designing and 

 building of a power sprayer which it was hoped would do the 

 work more thoroughly and rapidly than was possible to do by 

 hand, the cost of the machine being a secondary matter. In order 

 to secure efficiency the following conditions had to be met: 



For economy in time the apparatus should have a tank capacity 

 of at least 250 gallons; it must have a distributing capacity of 

 that amount per hour, as a team walking at its normal rate will 

 cover an acre of asparagus set in 6-foot rows in that time and 

 thorough hand spraying requires 250 gallons of Bordeaux mix- 

 ture per acre. The nozzles must be adjustable; as it is often 

 desirable to spray the asparagus when small and as the rows on 

 different beds are ^et at varying distances apart^ from 4 to 7 feet. 



