138 — How to Make the Garden Pay. 



copperas or perhaps flour of sulphur upon ground supposed to 

 be infected with disease germs. Keeping the premises free from 

 weeds and rubbish, and burning wastes and refuse, such as pota- 

 to tops, old tomato vines, dead weeds, leaves, etc., with all the 

 spores that have found a lodging place on these materials, will 

 close another avenue by which infection so frequently is given a 

 chance to enter. 



Another important precautionary measure is the selection 

 of resistant varieties, if any such are known, and the fortification 

 of all plants against the attacks of diseases by good culture and 

 judicious feeding. Strong growing plants are less subject to 

 some diseases than are plants with weakened vitality. Young 

 plants usually have greater power of resistance than older ones. 

 The following notes may serve as a guide in the recognition and 

 in the treatment of the special diseases : 



Diseases of the Bean. — Most common among these, and 

 often very annoying and destructive, is the ^* pod spot," or 

 anthracnose, which appears as small reddish-brown spots on 

 young pods of snap-beans, especially of the wax varieties. The 

 spots gradually increase in size, their centres become blackened, 

 then changing to dirty gray or light brown. The affected pods, 

 of course, are always worthless. The disease can be carried over 

 from year to year by the seed. It also attacks cucurbitaceous 

 plants. Beans and melons (or cucumbers, etc.) should be ex- 

 cluded from direct rotation. Reject infected seed, or disinfect it 

 carefully by washing in the corrosive sublimate solution, or in 

 Bordeaux mixture. The young plants may also be sprayed a 

 {q.w^ times with the latter mixture. The bean anthracnose has 

 usually been known under the name " bean rust," but the true 

 '^ bean rusf is a different disease, attacking both surfaces of the 

 leaf, and appearing in small round dark-colored spots. Spray- 

 ing repeatedly with the Bordeaux mixture may prevent its at- 

 tacks. 



The *^ bean blight,''* which appears on all the above-ground 

 parts of the plants in small pimples, often having a dull red 

 border, and which apparently is a bacterial disease ; and the 

 "lima bean w/Z/^/^zc/," which attacks and ruins the pods, resem- 

 bling the downy mildew of the potato, do not seem to have as 

 yet a general or even wide distribution. The preventive meas- 

 ures suggested for the former are the burning of the diseased 

 plants, the selection of healthy seed and crop rotation, while 

 spraying with Bordeaux mixture or other fungicides is supposed 

 to give good results for the other. 



Diseases of the Beet, — The "beet rust'" is little known 

 outside of the sugar-beet fields of California. The attacked 

 plants become dwarfed and discolored. The only treatment thus 



