1 68 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



May, 



Get Ready for the Codling Moth and 

 Curculio. 



Our insect foes are now ready to put in 

 their destructive work, and the orchardist, 

 if he desires to save his fruit in that condi- 

 tion of perfection which alone can insure 

 him profitable returns, must prepare to 

 meet them with poisonous solutions and 

 spraying apparatus. The utter necessity of 

 spraying orchard trees is now quite gener- 

 ally recognized by leading growers, but the 

 experience of A. C. Hammond, Secretary 

 of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, 

 may be of especial interest to our readers. 

 He relates his proceeding as follows; 



"I took the heads out of two 50 gallon 

 barrels, bored a large hole in each head in 

 which I kept a stick for stirring the mix- 

 ture, and put the heads back in the barrels 

 as floats. I then placed the barrels In a 

 wagon and filled them nearly full of water 

 — about 40 gallons in each. A pound of 

 London Purple was then thoroughly mixed 

 in a pail of water, divided between the 

 two barrels, and stirred untU the poison 

 was well mixed with the water. One man 

 was needed to drive, and keep the pail or 

 tub in which the pump worked filled, and 

 another to work the Lewis combination 

 force pump. We drove very slowly along 

 one side of a row of trees, and back on 

 another, and used great caution to see that 

 every part of the trees was reached, and 

 so thoroughly wet that the water would 

 drop from the leaves. The spraying wa.s 

 done June 1st, when the Apples were 

 about as large as a half-grown Cherry, 

 but should have been done a week earlier. 

 The second application was made 10 days 

 later. The orchard yielded fruit, 60 to 

 75 per cent of which was perfect, and 

 85 per cent was marketable, while ad- 

 joining orchards not sprayed, did not produce 

 a peck of perfect fruit. In fact, not another 

 orchard in the county produced so much 

 perfect fruit. My mixture was too strong 

 and burned the leaves somewhat, and here- 

 after I shall use a pound of London Purple 

 to three barrels of water (about 130 gallons) 

 and even a weaker mixture may be just as 

 good. [One pound of London Purple to 200 

 gallons of water is sufficiently strong— Ed.] 

 With the cheap pump that I used, two men 

 can go over a 10 acre orchard in a day, so 

 that a high priced spraying apparatus is not 

 absolutely necessary." 



The matter of pumps and spraying ma- 

 chines is as yet puzzling the minds of many, 

 and inquiries about them are frequently re- 

 ceived by us. With so many serviceable 

 pumps in the market, and freely advertised, 

 our friends can hardly go amiss. These im- 

 plements may be had of every working ca- 



Home Made Asparagus Bunohers. 



The modern devices for bunching Aspara- 

 gus are numerous, often too expensive, con- 

 sidering cost of production, and, after all, 

 perhaps not much more serviceable or con- 

 venient than the simple contrivances shown 

 in our illustrations, and copied from " Parks 

 and Gardens of Paris, (Robinson). Fig. 1 

 represents the buncher most commonly used 

 in France, and needs no other explanation 

 except that the front piece slides backward 

 or forward to correspond with length of 

 "grass." Fig. 2, represented with a finished 



ArgenteuU A«pa/ragu» Buncher, Fig. i. 



bunch, has no movable parts. The tip end 

 of grass is dropped through the wedge- 

 shaped opening, and kept close together by 

 the circular enclosure. The Argenteuil 

 buncher is shown closed in Fig. .3. and open 

 in Fig. 4. The board E, with the standard 

 B and C, slides in the grooves D D, and 

 when drawn out (an operation facilitated 

 by Inserting two fingers underneath into 

 the cavities indicated by the circular marks 

 near E) gives an opportunity for the removal 

 of the bunch when finished. 



Asparagus Buncfier, Fig. 1. 



pacity and almost any price, from a single 

 cheap hand spraying pump, such as used by 

 Mr. Hammond, (Lewis' Combination, P. 

 C. Lewis,;Catskill, N. Y.)to the more or less 

 elaborate geared machines of various firms, 

 such as Rumsey & Co., of Seneca Falls, N. Y.; 

 Nixon Nozzle and Machine Co., of Dayton, 

 O., the Field Force Pump Co., of Lock- 

 port, N. Y., etc. 



Plum Knots and other Nots. Obsta- 

 cles to Overcome. 



E. P. POWELL, ONEIDA CO, N. Y. 



Most of the Plum trees In Central New 

 York are destroyed, and most of those that 

 remain should be, as black knot has made 

 them valueless to the owner and a danger 

 to unaffected trees in the neighborhood. 

 Yet the black knot is one of the easiest 

 managed of all horticultural pests, and 

 I wish I could get on as well with the 

 curculio. My right-hand man, after a 

 lesson or two, fully comprehends the 

 proper method of extracting the knots: 

 and I have only to say to him twice or 

 three times a year "You may go over the 

 Plum trees to-day." The proper method 

 is to carefully cut off and out the warts 

 t; and every scrap of the festered wood. 

 Then cut above and below so far as you 

 ^, find a black Une lying along the heart 

 - of the limb. This makes some ugly sores, 

 but if done thoroughly, they will easily 

 heal over. When the knots appear on 

 small limbs, cut these off altogether. Collect 

 every exscinded part and burn it. When 

 trees have been long neglected cut them 

 down and burn ; then take care of the young 

 ones and keep them from getting diseased. 

 A really worse evil is a grub that tunnels 

 under the bark. These must be followed 

 with the knife and destroyed. 

 The time to cut black knot is in summer 



after the new growth. I also go over the 

 trees very carefully before the leaves start 

 in spring. I insist that Plum trees can 

 with comparative ease be kept clean after 

 being once well cleaned. 



"Apple trees are playing out in our cli- 

 mate. We cannot hereafter expect to raise 

 as good Apples as formally and the crop is 

 very uncertain." This common saying is 

 owing to three or four causes which do not 

 wholly cover the case. (1) There has been a 

 great deal of planting of new sorts of 

 Apples without considering their hardiness 

 or adaptability otherwise. The result Is 

 a loss of tender sorts. (3) The removal of 

 forests exposes our orchards far more than 

 formerly, and we have but one remedy, — 

 to select sheltered slopes, and plant wind- 

 breaks. (3) The trees obtained of nurseries 

 are often grafted on inferior stock. (4) We 

 have fallen Into the habit of supposing 

 Apple trees can take care of themselves. 

 A portion of the orchards in this State are 

 half grown to suckers. 



Orchard culture is not a thing of the 

 past, yet it is time that the same ground 

 should not be replanted to the same sort 

 of trees any more than sown to the same 

 sort of cereals. Nature rotates her forests. 

 Birch follows Beech; Butternut, Maple. I 

 find very little trouble in successfully 

 growing quite a long list of Apples. Among 

 those quite hardy are of the sweets, Ladies' 

 Sweeting, Sweet Bough, Tahnan Sweet, 

 Belle Bourn, and Pound Sweet; of sour 

 sorts, Northern Spy, Kirkland, Ben Davis, 

 Wealthy, Fameuse, Jonathan, White Pip- 

 pin, Astrachan and other Russian sorts. 

 Greening, Spitzenberg, Belmont, Baldwin 

 are less hardy except grafted on old trees. 

 The true rule Is to replace a diseased tree 

 promptly and not wait till there are large 

 gaps in our orchards. The expense is small. 

 There are constantly arising new condi- 

 tions for all sorts of vegetation. These 

 must be met by us and made favorable. 

 Fruits most easily grown at present will 

 likely meet with obstacles ere long. The 

 Cuthbert raspberry for instance is almost an 

 ideal success in large sections of the Rasp- 

 berry States. But pretty soon there will be 

 a wail of despair owing to a rust, or blight, 

 or insect. The Niagara Grape is an ideal for 

 a late white heavy cropper. How long be- 

 fore there will be an enemy that we must 

 conquer for the Niagara ? A few years ago 

 the A.sh tree borer came near ruining for me 

 a row of white Ash that for timber alone 

 was worth a thousand dollars. But by 



Asparaytis Buncher, Fig. 2. 



putting coal ashes in large quantities about 

 the trees I rescued them. The Pear tree 

 blight was terribly discouraging for several 

 years. It ruined so many that the end of 

 Pear culture was at hand. But we hav* 

 weathered the trouble, and now know how 

 to grow Pears in spite of the blight. We 

 have had to give up a few susceptible 

 sorts and the rest must be headed low, and 

 well drained and not overstimulated, and 

 kept well mulched, and the ground slightly 

 dug over, rather than plowed, and the re- 

 sult is plenty of Pears. 



The very first thing for a young man who 

 purposes to be a horticulturist to resolve 

 upon is to get rid of Plum knots and " can- 



