320 State Horticultural Society. 



It is hard on teams, also. Care should be taken, as it is worse than 

 lime alone on the skin. I will use it only in years in which I have 

 had severe injury to the trees. We sprayed second time just as the 

 last of the bloom was ready to fall, but was yet hanging on the trees. 

 Our solution was twelve pounds of bluestone; eighteen pounds of lime; 

 one pound of Paris green to one hundred and sixty gallons of water. 

 I have used more bluestone, but found it too much in former years. 

 1 spray once or twice more, depending upon the amount of rains we 

 have, and the appearance of the foliage and fruit. Men have asked 

 me to let them know when I was going to spray for they wanted to be 

 present. I tell them it is almost impossible, for we will commence 

 spraying, possibly, at times within fifteen or twenty-five minutes after 

 we see it is necessary. We use a spraying machine, that I think, is 

 somewhat like the kind used on the Olden Fruit Farm. It is built on 

 an ordinary farm wagon, to which we work four horses, abreast. The 

 front wheels are small, which enables us to turn short. We spray 

 thoroughly from one to three thousand trees daily. After all spraying 

 is over, we harrow the ground with springtooth harrows, or if it is too 

 dry or weedy, we use ordinary two-horse cultivators in the oldest 

 orchards, while in the younger ones, we break the ground with turn- 

 ing plows. The tree roots are not to be torn up in the young orchards 

 by deeper plowing, as they would be in older ones. Later we may 

 keep the ground loose with 'Sveeders," for some time, but if the ground 

 gets too hard to do good work with them, we put the harrow back to 

 w^ork again. We keep this up until the first of August. We plow 

 close to the trees with double-shovel plows, keeping the trees pruned, 

 so that a small horse or mule can walk within two to four feet of the 

 tree trunk. The plow is fastened to a chain and let back from the 

 singletree three or three and a half feet. 



There is one orchard in my vicinity that is not cultivated that 

 bears a good crop nearly every year, of better than average fruit; that 

 is not sprayed; it matures its fruit with fine color two weeks ahead of 

 my orchards, as do all other orchards similarly treated. When 

 orchardists can retain dense, healthy foliage on their trees until frost 

 bites it, causing the foliage to fall, and at the same time causing the 

 fruit to color then can they furnish the packers with firm, well flavored, 



