No. 4.] ONION GROWING. 263 



as his own circumstances will be the determining factor. One 

 prominent grower and dealer made this statement this winter, 

 "that in a period covering ten years the grower who sold in the 

 fall would make fully as much money as the man who held in 

 storage." There is the cost of handling, storage and shrinking 

 to take into consideration, and as stated before each grower 

 will have to decide the question for himself. The buyer stores 

 the onions and then supplies the market as fast as the demand 

 appears. 



Troubles. 



Yes, the onion grower has troubles, and some years there are 

 plenty. Perhaps the first thing that troubles the grower and 

 causes him to lose sleep is the high wind that comes each 

 spring through April and May. This is especially dangerous 

 for the man who is raising onions on light land, as the wind 

 will in some cases blow the seed from the ground, and every 

 year finds some fields resown for this reason. The only remedy 

 for this trouble is irrigation, of which more will be said later. 



Next, the onion maggot has the floor, and as yet no remedy 

 for this pest has appeared. The eggs of this insect are laid by 

 the onion fly on the outside of the plant close down to the 

 earth; the eggs hatch and the young maggot directly eats his 

 way into the heart of the plant. The first sign of trouble the 

 grower has is when the onions begin to die, and on pulling them 

 up he finds the maggot, sometimes four or five in a single stock. 

 A little extra heavy seeding and keeping the plants growing as 

 rapidly as possible is about all one can do in this case. 



Another serious insect enemy is the thrips, and here the best 

 remedy is irrigation, as this is a dry-weather trouble. The 

 writer has seen a field covered with thrips and looking as though 

 a fire had run over it, while just across the road was a field as 

 green and healthy as one could wish, simply because of irriga- 

 tion. The thrips is an insect that appears in dry weather and 

 sucks the juice out of the tops of the onions, always starting 

 on the knolls and spreading very rapidly. In practically every 

 instance the crop will stop growing at whatever stage it hap- 

 pens to be. 



On some old fields a disease known as ^mut has appeared and 

 caused trouble. One partial remedy is to use formaldehyde 



