8o THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



fruit growers. The man who will control conditions, is the 

 man who will be paid for fruit growing as never before. 



I do not hold the foolish belief that spraying is the only 

 thing that is going to make fruit growing successful; 

 spraying will not fertilize the soil or cultivate it, nor will it 

 prune the trees. You have begun on the wrong end if you 

 think spraying is all. If I must choose between spraying 

 and cultivating and fertilizing, I should abandon spraying, 

 and cultivate and fertilize. 



If growers think they can starve the trees by lack of 

 fertility and cultivation and once in three or four years cut 

 out their summer's fire wood from the trees and call it 

 pruning, and then go to work and spray and effect satisfac- 

 tory results, they will be sadly disappointed, and, as many 

 have done before, condemn spraying. After we have done 

 all the rest; given thorough fertilizing and cultivation, 

 with pruning, if we want perfect fruit and greatest success, 

 we must spray, and spray thoroughly and intelligently. 



I want to emphasize the foregoing facts before saying 

 anything about spraying in detail. 



Twelve years ago I was convinced after the best care I 

 knew how to give, that insects and disease were on the 

 increase, and when I first heard spraying talked of I 

 thought, as many have done since, that it was a great dis- 

 aster and perhaps I might as well quit the business first as 

 last. In the fall of 1886 I had sold my winter apples for 

 $2.55 per barrel, net, for first-class fruit. After careful 

 picking and grading we had one hundred barrels of 

 rejected apples on account of worms and scab. There 

 were about twenty-five barrels of windfalls, besides, out of 

 three hundred barrels that went to market. 



If these had been perfect, they would have brought over 

 $250, and they were worth $25 or $30 for cider. I reasoned 

 that if spraying would do what people say it will, it was a 

 good thing for me to try. I found that it would not only 

 give fair fruit, free from worms and scab, but would 

 greatly lessen the number of windfalls. The first year's 

 spraying is often disappointing. Many start in to spray 

 with very little knowledge of what they are spraying for, 

 ^r how to do the work. They do not do the work at the 



