132 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



face will at once show any inequality in 

 the land, and this in small beds can gen- 

 erally be easily rectified by means of a hoe, 

 shovel and wheelbarrow, or a horse scraper 

 may be used. 



After the beds are prpperly leveled give 

 a thorough irrigation about ten or twelve 

 days before you expect your plants. This 

 will put the land in a proper state of 

 moisture to receive the plants and also 

 enable you to see if your leveling has been 

 true. If the land allows the water to stand 

 over an inch and a half in any place you 

 will have to level up again. Planting will 

 be facilitated if the land be harrowed and 

 the surface left in good tilth after this 

 irrigation. 



In setting out the plants, take a stout 

 cord, such as carpenters use, and of the 

 length of your beds. At the distance of 

 every sixteen inches mark the cord with a 

 piece of string of a different color by in- 

 serting in the cord and tying a knot. The 

 rows are to be sixteen inches apart, and if 

 the cord be so placed that the rows all 

 start on a line, and a plant set at each 

 knot, you will have your plants running in 

 straight lines and at a distance of sixteen 

 inches each way. This is to enable you to 

 cultivate each way, using a Planet, junior, 

 hand or wheel hoe, two of which will cul- 

 tivate very nearly as many plants in a day 

 as will a horse, and at no more expense. 

 It is true the horse will get over much 

 more land, but the plants will have to be 

 thirty inches each way, and he will never 

 do such careful and thorough work as the 

 man. These wheel hoes are quite indis- 

 pensable on any strawberry or vegetable 

 farm. 



Plant the front row sixteen inches from 

 the border. Then plant two rows and 

 miss a row; then plant four rows and miss 

 a row, and so continue across the bed. If 

 your beds are thirty feet across, or say 

 twenty-eight feet clear of the borders, you 

 will have two rows at each side and three 

 beds of four rows each in the center, with 

 four alleys thirty -two inches wide to en- 

 able you to get at the berries, when you 

 want to pick them. Each bed will take 

 1,056 plants, or 17,000 to the acre. 



In planting, I have found nothing equal 

 to a spade. It is thrust into the ground 

 its full length and the handle pushed 

 about a foot away from the worker, which 

 leaves a most convenient wedged-shaped 

 hole for the plant, against the upright 



side of which the roots can be easily spread. 

 It is six times faster and more efficient than 

 a trowel. 



Subsequent cultivation consists in keep- 

 ing the soil at the roots constantly moist, 

 but not too wet, and giving a cultivation 

 after each irrigation with the wheel hoe. 

 An occasional hand hoeing will be neces- 

 sary where weeds are growing too near the 

 plants to be reached by the wheel hoe, and 

 of course all runners must be kept off the 

 plants, and just before the fruit appears a 

 mulch of straw, or home other suitable 

 material, must be laid between the rows in 

 order to keep the berries out of the mud. 



PRACTICAL VALUE OF SPRAYING. 



AT a recent meeting of the Western New 

 York Horticultural Society, in Roch- 

 ester, the following experience was recited: 



Mr. Albert Wood, of Orleans county, said 

 he had an apple orchard of twenty-five acres on 

 a gravelly loam. The trees were too close at 

 two rods apart. The shaded ground became 

 mossy; the red apples showed little color. He 

 went through the orchard and cut out every 

 other tree six years ago, since which nnie he 

 has cultivated and fed those that were left. In 

 1893 he sprayed two trees; on these the apples 

 were good, while most of the others went to the 

 dry house. On the 20th of April, 1894, he 

 sprayed his orchard, except fourteen tre* s left 

 for comparison, with twenty pounds of < opper 

 sulphate, four pails of lime and 150 gallons of 

 water. He sprayed again as the buds were 

 swelling, and again when the apples were half 

 an inch in diameter. About this time the ap- 

 ples on the unsprayed trees began to dri p. 

 With the last two sprayings he used Paris 

 green one pound to each 150 gallons of water. 

 On the fourteen trees not treated the foliage 

 was rusty. The thirty-five barrels of fruit he 

 picked from them shrunk five barrels between 

 picking and selling. Of the 2,000 barrels of 

 treated fruit the shrinkage was not five barrels 

 in the same time, and they brought thirty-eight 

 cents more a barrel. On a strawberry apple 

 tree that had not had a perfect apple in nine 

 years, every apple was sound. Similar results 

 were had with King, Baldwin and Twenty ounce 

 trees. Of Roxbury russets three-fourths of the 

 untreated apples were ground for cider, while 

 most of those treated were good. Roxburys 

 should have five sprayings a season. 



Pears were treated in the same way as the 

 apples. Some Virgalieus had borne no perfect 

 fruit for twenty-five years, and this year, when 

 sprayed, there was no imperfect fruit. His re- 

 sults showed ninety per cent, gain by spraying. 

 In a young orchard-row not treated the leaves 

 fell three weeks earlier, and the foliage was not 

 as heavy as on the sprayed trees. He had sim- 

 ilar results with treated and untreated cherry 

 and plum trees. From Fay's currants which 

 had been sprayed he picked fruit twenty days 



