266 



* * * GARDENING. 



May is, 



well. Bees are most destructive to ripe 

 fruit, and with grapes will quickly destroy 

 bunch after bunch. 



Bagging should be proceeded with just 

 as soon as flowering is over. A common 

 paper bag placed over the embryo bunch, 

 its mouth twisted tight and perhaps held 

 so by a pin, is a guarantee of a perfect 

 bunch. These bunches when ripe and 

 uncovered show a perfection of appear- 

 ance wanting in those not so treated. 

 Amateurs would be much pleased with 

 their work when the bunches were ripe, 

 as they would have perfect fruit with but 

 little trouble. 



Where spraying is thought necessary, or 

 where it is preferred, a commencement 

 should be made as soon as flowering is 

 over. Blue stone (copperas), five pounds 

 to 100 gallons of water, with the addi- 

 tion of ten pounds of lime, I have found 

 to make a reliable mixture. This is for 

 fungus pests. In districts where insects 

 are also troublesome, put about a half 

 pound of Paris green with it, and the 

 mixture is complete. 



Spray the vines as soon as flowering is 

 over. Repeat the operation in three 

 weeks, and again four weeks later. This 

 may be sufficient for the season, unless 

 heavy rains wash the mixture off, in 

 which case another spraying may be 

 applied. Joseph Meehan. 



Philadelphia. 



Japanese wineberry. These monstrosi- 

 ties of the raspberry family are absolutely 

 worthless, for the Northwestern states at 

 least. W. J. Movle. 



Madison, Wis. 



RASPBERRIES FOR WISCONSIN. 



In looking over the comments of the 

 many raspberry growers in our state, I 

 find great diversity of opinion as to what 

 is best to plant, and how to cultivate. 

 It is generally conceded that it is abso- 

 lutely necessary to give all raspberries, 

 without regard to variety, winter pro- 

 tection, by laying them down and cover- 

 ing with earth; still, a few extensive 

 growers in the southern part of the state 

 give no protection and succeed fairly well. 

 Good clean cultivation, with frequent 

 stirrings of the soil, is accepted as the 

 best mulch possible for the bushes during 

 the fruiting season. 



At the Experiment Station, while we 

 have a great many varieties on trial, our 

 main planting for experiment work con- 

 sists of the old standard varieties, Gregg 

 and Cuthbert. During the past summer, 

 in observing a trial plot of several seasons 

 standing I noticed that Sprv's Early 

 possessed many good qualities. The 

 individual merits of this berry should 

 recommend it to every lover of a good 

 blackcap raspberry. The Nemaha has 

 been extensively planted in the northern 

 part of the state and has been highly 

 spoken of. Our experience with it proves 

 to us that the plant lacks vitality to 

 ripen properly the enormous crop of ber- 

 ries which it sets, thus giving us a small 

 seedy fruit. 



For market purposes the red varieties 

 are superseding the black. The Loudon 

 is undoubtedly a fine berry, still it does 

 not equal the old Cuthbert on our 

 grounds at Madison in growth of cane 

 or quality of fruit. Of the purple varie- 

 ties, 1 notice that during the present mild 

 winter, whenever the canes of Schaffer's 

 Colossal were exposed to the weather 

 they winter-killed badly , and undoubtedly 

 during one of our severe winters they 

 would die, root and branch. 



Great claims are made for the Columbia 

 by growers in the vicinity of Fort Atkin- 

 son, where it is grown by the acre, with 

 no winter protection and excellent results. 



Some of the catalogues this spring are 

 still extolling the merits of the Golden 

 mayberry, strawberry- raspberry and 



THE CURRANT BORER. 



Fd Gardening: — I have tried your rem- 

 edy for currant borers (removing and 

 burning infested canes) for three years. 

 The canes all being infested each year and 

 the result of the "cure" is no currants 

 with the trouble recurring each year. Is 

 there no other remedy? L. Murphy. 



[We do not know of any remedy other 

 than that mentioned in our last issue. 

 Some currant growers among our read- 

 ers may be able to suggest a more effi- 

 cient method of dealing with the pest. — 

 Ed] 



GREENHOUSE PESTS, SAN JOSE SCALE AND 

 LEGISLATION VERSUS INSECTS. 



At a recent meeting of the New York 

 Florists' Club, the following valuable 

 paper was read by Prof. John B. Smith: 



The topics are wide, and either would 

 furnish a text for a sermon if treated at 

 large; but I will content mj'self with 

 making suggestions rather than exhaust- 

 ive aryd exhausting descriptions. 



All rational methods for the destruc- 

 tion of insects, indoors or in the fields, 

 must be based upon a knowledge of the 

 character of the insect to be dealt with, 

 of its life history and of the way in which 

 the destructive agent is expected to work. 



In the greenhouse where leaves and 

 flowers are the desired products, many 

 methods that are available in the field, 

 become useless. The plants are more del- 

 icate, the foliage is more tender and the 

 flowers must be guarded from anything 

 that will tend to discolor or in any way 

 injure their perfection. 



We must attempt to arrange our prac- 

 tice so as to destroy the insects without 

 harming our plants, and the selection of 

 a proper agent is sometimes difficult. 

 First, it is important to know how we 

 kill insects. Of course in those cases 

 where the creatures eat the leaf tissue 

 and we use arsenicals the matter is sim- 

 ple. The poison acts through the stom- 

 ach exactly as if some higher animal were 

 the victim. But stomach poisons, espe- 

 cially arsenicals, are rarely desirable in a 

 greenhouse, and the insects against which 

 they are necessary are not among those 

 that are most destructive. 



Most of the greenhouse pests are suck- 

 ers and creatures that live on the plant 

 juices and merely puncture the outer tis- 

 sue to get at the liquid within. Crea- 

 tures like that cannot be reached by 

 stomach poisons until we learn how to 

 poison the plant circulation itself. 



Of course the damage caused is in direct 

 proportion to the number of insects pres- 

 ent. A single plant louse, for instance, 

 can do little harm on a carnation leaf, 

 for example — it makes a puncture or two, 

 exhausts a few cells and dies. The 

 amount of sap taken is insignificant, and 

 not in the least a drawback to the plant. 

 Locally we see a minute yellow spot, and 

 if the leaf be held up toward the light and 

 examined with a glass, a thin spot of 

 exhausted plant cells is seen. With a 

 higher magnification we may see the 

 minute puncture itself. But this is not 

 all, unfortunately. Bacteria and other 

 disease germs are constantly present in 

 the air and on the plant surface; so long 

 as this surface remains unbroken they are 

 harmless; but so minute are they that 



even the slightest wound gives them 

 entrance, and the puncture made by a 

 plant louse is more than sufficient. The 

 exhausted and partly decaying cells 

 injured by the insects form an excellent 

 culture medium for the micro-organism 

 and soon the minute spot beginstogrow. 

 Then we find a bacteriosis of carnations 

 fully established and now a germ disease 

 instead of an insect must be fought. 



I do not mean to assert that all cases 

 of bacteriosis are started in this way. for 

 any skin wound will serve equally well; 

 but it cannot be doubted that in a large 

 percentage of cases the origin of the dis- 

 ease is from an insect puncture. As the 

 insects increase in number, their injury 

 becomes more severe. Yellow spots mul- 

 tiply and the plant begins to feel not only 

 the loss of sap, but the failure of the 

 leaves to exercise their proper function. 

 The disease centers are equally multiplied 

 and the plant becomes physically unfit to 

 perform its work of producing perfect 

 flowers in satisfactory quantity. 



We get, then, one very important sug- 

 gestion here — keep plants as sound as 

 possible and deal with insects at once, 

 when they are few in number, not when 

 they have become so numerous that the 

 plants are practically unable to recover. 

 We must always remember that plants 

 are living beings and responsive to both 

 good and bad treatment. They are as 

 variable in their resisting powers to out- 

 side influence as are the members of the 

 animal kingdom, and the one in the best 

 physical health in either case, stands the 

 best chance of altogetheravoiding injury. 



To understand just how contact 

 poisons work on insects we must consider 

 for an instant the general anatomy, and 

 particularly their mode of breathing. 

 Insects have no closed system of blood 

 circulation such as we find in higher ani- 

 mals. There is only one long tube more 

 or less divided into chambers and this 

 acts as a pump, forcing the blood into the 

 head cavity and from there it makes its 

 way through the body among the muscles 

 and viscera until it finds its way back 

 into the pump. 



Neither do insects have lungs and yet 

 they require air to purify the blood, for 

 life is essentially the same in them as in 

 man. Therefore a modification in struc- 

 ture has occurred and the air is carried 

 in flexible tubes to all parts of the body. 

 These tubes go everywhere where the 

 blood goes, and they open along the sides 

 of the body — never on the head. An 

 insect breathes, then, along the entire 

 length of each side and there may be as 

 many as twenty openings, although there 

 are usually less. Ordinarily contact 

 poisons act through these spiracles or 

 breathing pores, though sometimes, on 

 soft-bodied slugs we can use caustics. In 

 the greenhouse, however, these caustics 

 would be almost as dangerous to the 

 plants as to the insects, hence the safer 

 materials which act through the spiracles 

 must be employed. 



These may be soaps of various kinds, 

 tobacco decoctions, oils, dry powders or 

 gases, and each of these acts in a different 

 way. 



One of the simplest of the remedies usu- 

 ally employed is sulphur, either dry or in 

 the shape of sulphur water. In either 

 case the result is duetothe decomposition 

 of the sulphur producing a vapor which 

 is deadly to insect life. Against creatures 

 like the red mite or spider so often found 

 on violets and other plants, dry sulphur 

 spread on the soil and allowed to decom- 

 pose slowly by the warmth and moisture 

 often acts like a charm. Sulphur, indeed, 

 is almost a specific against mites or sinii- 



