886 
across the center of the crate and used 
to shade one end of the crate while the 
other is being filled. The pickers should 
be made to grade the fruit, and the best 
way is to have them put the culls in cer- 
tain boxes and pay them for picking 
these the same as first class fruit. This 
plan provides a place for fruit the picker 
gathers and hates to throw away because 
it fills up. Dewberries should be picked 
when a full glossy black. Berries which 
have gone beyond this stage and turned 
a dull or more ashy color are too ripe to 
ship. The cull box is the place for over- 
ripe, dry, and poorly colored berries. 
Ripe berries start mold if packed for 
shipment. 
Dewberries should not be picked when 
moist, as after a heavy dew or rain. 
Pickers are paid by the crate, thirty 
cents, if they pick part of the season, and 
thirty-five cents if they finish the season. 
If the grower does not protect himself 
in this way, some of the pickers will 
leave him when picking gets poor. 
Yields and Returns 
A dewberry plantation in good bearing 
will yield from three hundred to four 
hundred crates of berries per acre. Mr. 
Baldridge’s patch, on four and one-half 
acres of ground was set in 1903. In 1904 
it yielded 125 crates of berries, in 1905, 
1,800 crates; in 1906, 1,800 crates and in 
1907, 2,000 crates. It would probably 
be hard to give a satisfactory estimate 
of the cost of production of dewhberries. 
The crate costs the grower 27 cents and 
Picking 35 cents per crate, plus probably 
5 cents for overseeing and crating the 
fruit. At present (1909) the average 
price paid for dewberries has been $2.25 
per crate F. O. B. the nearest shipping 
point. 
O. B. WaHIPPLr 
Colo. Exp Sta. Bul. 136 
Varieties 
[Only three varieties are recommended 
by the American Pomological Society for 
propagation, the Lucretia and Mayes or 
Austin-Mayes having proven successful 
and the McDonald, which is recommenda- 
ed for trial.—Ed.] 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
DEWBERRY DISEASES 
The dewberry is troubled by the same 
fungus and other diseases, for the most 
part, as the raspberry and blackberry. 
The reader is referred to the diseases 
of these plants. 
Double Blossom 
Fusarium rubs Winter 
A disease known as “double blossom” 
occurs on several species of rubus; but 
has attacked the Lucretia dewberry es- 
pecially. It has been reported from the 
Middle Atlantic states and westward to 
the Mississippi, having first attracted at- 
tention in Illinois. 
The disease produces witches’ brooms 
on the buds which sometimes remain 
green after the canes are dead. Diseased 
buds show larger than normal in the 
spring and are frequently of a reddish 
color. 
The outer flower parts are increased in 
number and appear crumpled while the 
ovaries fail to develop fruit. Soon after 
the opening of the flower buds the fungus 
fruits and the spores falling upon young 
buds germinate and grow inward. The 
fungus remains dormant here until the 
following spring. 
Hand picking of the diseased buds is 
the most practicable method of control 
at present known. 
Reference 
M. F. Cook, Delaware Experiment Sta- 
tion, Bulletin 98. 
DEWBERRY PESTS 
The dewberry is attacked by much the 
Same species of insects as other members 
of the Rubus family. See under Black- 
berry and Raspberry Pests. 
Diseases of Plants 
Origin and Nature of Disease 
All diseases originate from one of two 
sources. First, the nature of the organ- 
ism in which the disease is located. 
Second, the nature of the environment, 
which is something outside of the organ- 
ism and to which it is closely related. 
Whoever would, therefore, understand 
disease, must know something of the 
organism in which the disease is lo- 
