7 6 THE COMPLETE GARDEN 



worse than the disease; (3) a thorough job must be done or else the 

 whole job may have to be done over at too late a season to secure the 

 best results; (4) the correct time must be picked or a rain storm 

 may undo the whole work within a few hours; (5) the spray must 

 stick to the plant long enough to be of some use, especially in the case 

 of poisons. 



The various forms of sprays may be classified in four different ways: 

 according to the season of spraying, the kind of chemicals used, the 

 form in which the chemical is applied, and the kind of plants sprayed. 



Seasons for Spraying. The seasons for outdoor spraying are two: 

 the summer or growing season, and the winter or dormant season. 

 Summer sprays are invariably not applied so strong as winter spra}^s, 

 because the bark on the new shoots as well as the leaves would be 

 injured by a spray of a strength which would not only be entirely safe, 

 but advisable to use when a plant was dormant. Dormant sprays are 

 mostly confined to those applied for protection against vegetable 

 parasites and those intended to destroy scale insects. Some useful 

 winter work is often done in the destroying of egg masses and cocoons 

 by torches and the application of creosote or other strong paints by 

 hand in small quantities; but this is not, strictly speaking, spraying. 

 Summer spraying includes nearly all the methods used in the dormant 

 season, with the spray made more or less dilute, dependent upon the 

 exact season, as well as all the other forms of sprays. It should be 

 noted that dormant spraying may be done at almost any time after the 

 plants become dormant in the autumn and until they start growth in 

 the spring; but it is not advisable to attempt to spray during freezing 

 weather, nor too early in the winter, because in the latter event much 

 of the benefits of the spray will be lost through the subsequent winter 

 storms. If dormant spraying is delayed until nearly spring some 

 beneficial results may be expected to extend into the summer, which 

 would otherwise have been lost. Summer spraying, on the contrary, 

 must usually be done at some precise time in order to secure the de- 

 sired results, though this is not always strictly necessary. 



Spray Chemicals Used. The spray chemicals used are those which 

 are best adapted to destroy the various forms of plant and animal 

 parasites which it is desired to attack. Sometimes it is possible to 

 combine two forms of chemicals in one spray and thus make one 



