SPRAYING 51 



right quality have to be selected and led to the string 

 while small, then constantly trained in order to keep 

 them climbing upward until they reach the top wire ; 

 the extra shoots have also to be pulled out, and later 

 the lower leaves and shoots are stripped off because 

 they harbour vermin. Meanwhile the ground is 

 heavily manured and maintained in a fine tilth by 

 repeated workings with a cultivator that will just 

 travel between the rows, the slips between the plants 

 being hoed by hand. In good gardens the land is 

 kept beautifully clean ; we saw acre after acre without 

 a weed, every hop trained like its neighbour in exact 

 rows, and a mellow, crumbling tilth everywhere. 



The severest work and this, like the training on 

 string, is a comparatively modern practice is the 

 spraying or washing, as it is called. The hop plant, 

 particularly when pushed along for a big crop, is 

 subject to attacks of green fly, which may multiply 

 with excessive rapidity and so cripple the growth that 

 the leaves turn black with honeydew and no hops at 

 all are produced. These " black blights " are, however, 

 things of the past except in the out-of-the-way, 

 neglected gardens ; the modern grower never lets the 

 aphis get hold, but as soon as it appears deluges the 

 plant with a spray consisting generally of a weak 

 solution of soft soap and quassia. This washing is 

 done by machines dragged through the hop garden 

 by three or four horses, and throwing a great cloud of 

 spray 20 ft. high, some three or four hundred gallons 

 of wash per acre being distributed by the machines. 

 Some growers have even laid on a system of under- 

 ground pipes all over their holding, and force the wash 

 from a common centre to a series of standpipes to 

 which lengths of hose can be attached when it is 

 desired to wash, the jets being directed by hand on to 



