74 Report of State Board of Horticulture. 



WHALE-OIL soap AND QUASSIA. 



Strong soap suds made from any good soap are useful for destroy- 

 ing soft-bodied insects like plant-lice. It is usual, however, to 

 employ for this purpose special soaps made with fish-oils and sold 

 as whale-oil soaps. These vary considerably in composition, some 

 being made with soda, others with potash lye. The latter are much 

 superior and buyers should insist on having potash soajDS. 



For scale insects, whale-oil soap is sometimes used in as con- 

 centrated a solution as two pounds of soap to one gallon of water, 

 but only upon dormant plants. As a remedy for the various plant- 

 lice one pound of soap to eight or ten gallons of water is usually 

 sufficient. Hop growers are inclined to believe that better results 

 are obtained, when spraying for hop-lice, by a'dding some quassia 

 decoction to the soap solution, as follows: 



Whale-oil soap 10 pounds 



Quassia 5 pounds 



Water 100 gallons 



Place the quassia chips in a sack, cover with eight or ten gallons 

 of water and soak twelve to twenty-four hours. Then bring to a 

 boil, remove the chips, add the soap and boil until it is dissolved. 

 Add water to make 100 gallons. The whale-oil soap and quassia 

 spray is used principally by hop growers. 



BLACK LEAF SHEEP DIP. 



Black leaf sheep dip, a proprietary tobacco preparation, may 

 be used for the same purpose as kerosene emulsion or whale-oil 

 soap and quassia and has the advantage that it does not injure 

 foliage and is ready for use. One gallon diluted with 75 to 100 

 gallons of water makes a very efficient aphidicide. 



W^IIEN TO SPRAY. 



General directions as to how many times to spray and when the 

 applications should be made are at best unsatisfactory. The answer 

 to both questions depends not on^.v upon the variety of fruit to be 

 sprayed, but also upon the conditions prevailing in the orchard to 

 be sprayed, and the relative importance of the orchard crop to 

 other crops. The orchardist can afford to do more spraying than 

 can the farmer. 



An almost universal practice in this State — and a good one — is 

 to spray the orchard, whatever the kind of fruit, with lime-sulphur 

 at some time while the trees are dormant. "WHiile this application 

 is made primarily for San Jose scale, I believe there is no other 

 which has such a generally benefic'al result. It is the annual 

 "house-cleaning" of the orchards. 



The best time for this winter spraying is immediately after the' 

 leaves drop in fall — even before they are all off — or just before the 



