CHAPTER XV 



THE SPRAYING CAMPAIGN 



Disagreeable but Necessary. — If anyone were to take a vote 

 of the orchard men of the country as to which is the messiest 

 and most thoroughly disagreeable operation connected with grow- 

 ing fruit, spraying would be elected unanimously to the position. 

 There is no question about that. Neither is there any question 

 that it is more important than any other one operation. We 

 may neglect to prune our trees, we may fail to fertilize them 

 and we may grow them in a hay field and still we may frequently 

 grow some very good fruit. But the man who can proudly 

 boast that he did not spray his orchard and still had a crop of 

 fine fruit is in a hopeless and ever-dwindling minority. He is 

 still to be found ; occasionally he even gets into a fruit meeting, 

 but his days are numbered. The advent of each new pest 

 makes the non-spraying orchardist more rare, until he will soon be 

 worthy of a place in a dime museum. 



Now since spraying is so disagreeable and yet so indispen- 

 sable, the thing for the orchardist to do is to use the best ma- 

 chinery and the most approved materials and then to fix his mind 

 on the good he is doing and not on how disagreeable the work is. 

 After all. if the operator does use the best apparatus and does 

 protect himself as fully as possible with gloves and a hood he 

 can get through the job with a fair degree of comfort, particu- 

 larly if, as suggested, he thinks about the wormy apples he is not 

 going to raise. While the writer thoroughly believes this, and is 

 satisfied that anyone who once gets at it will find that it is not 

 as bad as it might be, still he has a great deal of sympathy with 

 the novice who feels rather appalled at the prospect of under- 

 taking the work. 



As the beginner looks over even the condensed list of enemies 

 given in this book, and as he notes that this one requires spraying 



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