No. 4.] TRUCK FARMING. 31 



keeps the vines green and vigorous. In this spraying we usually 

 find it advisable to train the vines on the rows so that we will 

 get through the vines. 



Question. I would like to ask the speaker if he thinks 

 melon blight is caused by weather conditions or insects. 



Professor Johnson. Neither one. The weather conditions 

 may be favorable for the development of it, but the melon 

 blight is either a fungous or bacterial disease. The insect comes 

 in when you have a bacterial disease, and the insect sucks the 

 juice out of the plant, and it may be carried out to other 

 plants. The insect may be either of the flea-beetle type or the 

 striped cucumber type or another type the name of which 

 escapes me for the moment. The control of insects plays a 

 large part in the control of the distribution of plant diseases, 

 the insect getting the plant diseases on its body and carrying 

 them to other plants. We have had all that demonstrated 

 recently by the typhoid germ being carried by the fly. 



Mr. HiGGENBOTHAM. What is it that attacks the small 

 plants just as the seed leaves are coming out? On the cucumber 

 the leaves seem to curl up and turn yellow. 



Professor Johnson. There is a small beetle that looks 

 something like the flea beetle. It is not the flea beetle, but 

 from ordinary appearance it might be taken for one. Those 

 insects jump off and go on the ground. Now, one of the best 

 remedies we have found for them — not a remedy, after all, 

 but only a means of driving them away — is by applying raw 

 fish scrap, — dried ground fish scrap. Do not take fish scrap 

 that has been treated with phosphoric acid, but take the or- 

 dinary fish scrap. You can put that right on top of the cucum- 

 ber plant as it comes through the ground and it will drive 

 them away. It does not kill them. 



Mr. George W. Trull. Did I understand you to say how 

 many times you spray for blight? 



Professor Johnson, We usually spray cucumbers about 

 every ten days or two weeks, depending on weather conditions, 

 making the first application when the vines are 16 to 20 inches 

 long. If we have dry weather it is not necessary to spray 

 more than every two weeks, but if the weather happens to be 

 a little cloudy or with some rain, and the vines are making a 



