72 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



impossibility, in many localities, and that cause so large a part of the apple 

 crop to be wormy and to drop, but which may be destroyed by spraying 

 with a mixture of one pound of London purple to one hundred gallons of 

 water. Mix the London purple thoroughly in sufficient water to make a 

 paste; then stir into a pail of water and allow to stand over night. Strain 

 this through a fine sieve or a coarse cloth, into the distributing barrel or 

 tank. This remedy is even cheaper than the Bordeaux mixture. The Lon- 

 don purple costs twenty cents per pound. Fifty gallons of the mixture will 

 spray an acre of orchard, and one man will spray ten acres of orchard per 

 day. E. D. L. Evans of Houseman, Oceana county, Michigan, writes me 

 that " We sprayed a ten-acre orchard between eight o'clock and three, and 

 put eight barrels of solution on it. The cost of orchard spraying, per 

 acre, per spraying, will not exceed, for labor and material, 25 cents per 

 acre. This is certainly a cheap and profitable way of getting an apple 

 crop where otherwise no crop, or at the best a very poor one, would be 

 obtained; and by spraying we not only get perfect fruit, but keep our 

 orchards healthy and thrifty. 



There is one more important insecticide — kerosene emulsion, for hop 

 lice, squash bugs, leaf hoppers, aphis, bark lice, etc. I prepare it by dis- 

 solving one-half pound of hard soap — only the best whale-oil soap should 

 be used — in four pints of water, by boiling. When the soap is all dis- 

 solved remove from the fire and add eight pints of kerosene and agitate 

 the whole briskly until a stable mixture is formed. This is best done by 

 using a force-pump and pumping the mixture with force back into the 

 vessel that contains it. The emulsion may be diluted to the desired 

 strength and used at once, or it may be allowed to stand and be used when 

 needed. The strength ordinarily used is prepared by diluting one part of 

 the emulsion with ten or twelve parts of water. It will be seen that the 

 cost of this is, like that of the other insecticides, really insignificant. In 

 a ten-times dilution — full strong for ordinary purposes — of 240 pints or 

 30 gallons, we have one pound of whale-oil soap, which costs 15 cents, and 

 15 pints or 2 gallons, of kerosene, cost 25 to 30 cents. It will be seen that 

 the cost is little more than one cent per gallon. 



To destroy the canker worm, codlin moth, or curculio on apple trees, 

 spray soon after the blossoms fall — when the apples are the size of a pea— 

 and again in a week or ten days. To destroy the plum curculio, spray the 

 trees three or four times, at intervals of a week or ten days, beginning as 

 soon as the blossoms have fallen. To prevent leaf -blight of pear or quince, 

 spray every three weeks until about August first, beginning in March, 

 when the leaf bud has not yet unfolded. Five sprayings are usually fully 

 sufficient. For black rot of the grape, begin after the vineyard has been 

 pruned and put in order, but before vegetation starts, spraying thoroughly, 

 spray again about ten days before the flowers open, the third time when 

 the flowers are opening, and from that on every three weeks until the 

 fruit begins to color — say five or six sprayings in all. 



You can now compute easily how much it will cost you to keep your 

 vines and trees free from disease and insects; what a trifling expense is 

 necessary almost to insure you thrifty orchards and vineyards and large 

 yields of perfect fruits. It may truly be said of spraying that the benefits 

 are out of all proportion to the cost. When we consider how palatable 

 and wholesome, how altogether desirable, are the fruits of the tree and of 

 the vine, how favorable to the development of the best elements of human 

 character is the tending of the orchard and the vineyard, surely we are 



