THE COUNTRY HOME [chapteb 



efficient by stirring in one pound of whale-oil soap 

 to every fifty gallons. 



These formulae will be very helpful, and abso- 

 lutely essential to beginners, but there will be, I 

 assure you, room enough for the application of in- 

 dividual judgment and experimentation. Every 

 orchard offers conditions that modify treatment; so 

 does each year — 1902 held through the whole 

 summer an excess of moisture, and, as a result, 

 lime was absorbed by the atmosphere, and the or- 

 dinary mixtures for spraying that are generally 

 safe burned the trees. Immense damage was done 

 throughout the whole apple belt, but especially in 

 New York State. Under similar conditions more 

 lime must be added to your formulae. It has been 

 found by our best horticulturists that not one of the 

 remedies or preventives suggested will work with 

 precisely the same results in all orchards. The age 

 and the vigor of trees must be considered. In a 

 young orchard scales and aphidse have so much 

 nourishment that not one young one fails to thrive. 

 In this case spraying will have to be repeated more 

 frequently than in an old orchard, where a large 

 proportion of the insects fail at birth. 



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