PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 139 



Mr. Pardee. — To kill the brakes I would apply salt or pliospbate of lime. 



Mr. Adrian Bergen. — I would plow up the soil in the fall, and let it 

 remain so all winter. 



Mr. Wm. S. Carpenter. — I would spade the ground in ridges in autumn, 

 and apply salt aiid gas lime in the spring. 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — That is all very well to talk about plowing; biit 

 a great deal of land where brakes grow never was plowed and never will 

 be. If salt will kill them without plowing then it would be the cheapest 

 method that could be adopted. 



Mr. R. G. Pardee. — The worms were troublesome in my garden last 

 year, and I watched for the last day that I could spade it up before freez- 

 ing. That night the newly spaded earth froze solid, and finished oflF the 

 worms effectually. I have no doubt it saved my crop of grapes this year. 



Mr. Wm. S. Carpenter. — I recommend gas lime as well as exposing the 

 soil to freezing. But it must be used carefully where there are any shrubs 

 or plants, or it may kill them. I think it will kill worms. I am sure salt 

 will, and so it will vegetation, as I have experienced to my cost, by having 

 a man put it where he was told not to put it. I have been using a new 

 fertilizer last year that is also death to everything it comes in contact with, 

 until it is decomposed. Then it is a very valuable ingredient. This is 

 printers' roller composition. It must be used with as much caution as 

 guano, salt or lime. 



Barberry Hedges. 



A gentleman in Chautauqua county wants to know about the use of bar- 

 berry for hedges. 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — This bush is a prickly shrub, and grows six or 

 eight feet high, and I have often wondered that it is not used as an orna- 

 mental shrub. The foliage, blossoms and fruit are all very pretty. The 

 berries are very bright scarlet, half inch or more in length, and near a 

 fourth of an inch in diameter. They are exceedingly acid and are used for 

 culinary purposes. The bush is easily propagated by seeds, roots or 

 suckers, but I would not recommend it for hedges, because it exhausts the 

 soil. The roots are used for coloring yellow, and the bark for medicine. 

 This bush is of the Berberris genus, and should not be confounded with 

 one known as Baberry, in New England, where both grow quite common. 

 Barberry produces acid red berries. Baberry berries are not larger than 

 bird shots, of a bluish-green color, from which vegetable tallow is pro- 

 duced, which is of a light green color, very hard and dry, and prized for 

 mixing with beef tallow, to make candles for summer use. 



Iodine for Insects. 



Dr. S. J. Parker, of Ithaca, said: Can any one in the Farmers' Club 

 give any account of the use of iodine as more economical and useful than 

 sulphur in preventing insects and mildew in graperies ? It is said that 

 the use of a minute quantity in the water with which the roots in the 

 border are watered, renders the vine less liable to mildew. Tliat insects 

 are not fond of the slight fumes of evaporating iodine. Has any one of the 

 Club ever used it — fumio-ated with it at niu-lit ? 



