17^2 
T H E G A R D E X M A (i A Z I X E 
December, 1916 
shaken from the trees and caught on a sheet, 
or poultry will gobble them up. The arsenate 
of lead spray for codling moth will get man}’ of 
them. 
Fall u'(b zvorm. Acts like the tent cater- 
illar and may be treated in the same way, 
ut does far less damage, as the growing season 
is over when it appears. 
Fungous troubles are a somewhat different 
matter. The spores of fungi scatter in damp 
weather and find lodgment in loose bark, etc. 
It us easier to prevent than to kill them. 
They chiefly attack old trees and often dis- 
eased limbs will rot and die in spite of you. 
But it pays to scrape and clean the old trees, 
and to spray religiously, for thus you will save 
many untouched branches and will protect 
vour young orchard. I he fungicides include 
bordeaux mixture and various sulphur com- 
pounds. The former, I find, is passing out of 
favor with many orchardists, who now use the 
lime-sulphur washes, self-boiled lime-sulphur, 
and soluble sulphur. The work must be 
thoroughly done, for the fungus plants are 
minute. Early spraying is the most effective. 
The practice of delaying the spraying for 
fungous troubles until summer has little 
value. 
There are almost if not quite as many 
fungous diseases as there are insect pests. 
The most important of them may be sum- 
marized as follows; 
Apple scab or black spot. The worst of the 
fungous diseases. Causes severe damage to 
both foliage and fruit. The Fameuse family 
of apples, including the popular McIntosh, 
are especially susceptible. Scab on fruit 
causes rapid deterioration and ruins the ap- 
pearance. A copper sulphate solution or 
bordeaux mixture should be used where the 
disease is prevalent, and the trees should be 
sprayed just as tbe fruit buds open. Later 
applications of dilute lime-sulphur serve to 
check the spread of the disease. 
Pear scab. \’ery similar. 
Brozun rot. Causes peaches, plums, and 
cherries to rot and fall before ripening. Self- 
boiled lime-sulphur is best. 
Peach scab. Causes dark spots on fruit. 
Self-boiled lime-sulphur after blossoms fall. 
Black rot of grapes. Bordeaux mixture is 
safe here. 
Black knot. .Affects plums and cherries. 
Knots should be cut out and burned. Bor- 
deaux mi.xture used in summer affords some 
protection. 
Leaf-curl of peach. Lime-sulphur as the 
buds begin to swell. 
Bitter rot. Makes circular spots on apples 
which spread rapidly. -Apply the fungicides in 
June and repeat later. 
Apple scald. Spoils the appearance of 
fruit. Xo complete preventive yet discov- 
ered. 
In general it may be said that if trees are 
thoroughly sprayed for scale with lime-sulphur, 
the fungous troubles are not likely to appear 
in a young orchard, but an additional spray 
of self-boiled li/fie-sulphur or soluble sulphur, 
especially if miscible oils are used for the scale, 
is good insurance. 
I will not go into the composition of the 
spraying compounds, for the average fruit 
grower is not usually interested in that. 
Making your own lime-sulphur, for example, 
is a nasty job and is hardly worth while except 
in the case of large commercial orchards. 
.Arsenate of lead, bordeaux-lead mixtures, 
lime-sulphur, and soluble sulphur may be 
purchased ready to mix with water and use, 
and the manufacturers furnish full directions. 
This is the easiest way for the gardener or small 
fruit-grower. If you wish to use the self- 
boiled lime-sulphur, send to the United States 
Department of Agriculture at Washington for 
a special bulletin on the subject. 
1 he only thing you really need to make 
yourself is the kerosene emulsion. Use half 
a pound of hard soap, one gallon of boiling 
soft water, and two gallons of kerosene oil. 
The soap is dissolved in the hot water, then 
the kerosene is added and the whole churned 
vigorously until emulsified. The emulsion is 
diluted for use from four to fifteen times. At 
the present time soluble sulphur is being advo- 
cated as both an insecticide and a fungicide. 
Evidently a thorough application of spray. Even the 
ground under the tree is white! 
for all the ordinary uses of spraying. I have 
not used it myself, but a neighbor of mine 
reports satisfactory results from it. 
As to machinerjs the catalogues of the manu- 
facturers tell the whole story. For the aver- 
age grower who has not more than four or five 
acres of trees, a barrel sprayer with hand 
pump is sufficient. The one I use has a handle 
which works back and forth and not up and 
down, and one man or even a boy can operate 
it with ease. Two lines of hose make it pos- 
sible for two men to spray at once. See to it 
that the outfit is equipped with a good paddle 
or agitator for keeping the material well 
mixed. The small bucket sprayers are good 
only for small fruits or for a garden containing 
a few small or dwarf trees. 
For larger orchards a power sprayer is 
necessary, unless the land is too hilly for its 
use. Of late years the power sprayers have 
been greatly improved and made less expen- 
sive. 
I'he outfit is most easily drawn upon a wagon 
with wheels suitable for travelling on plowed 
ground. In my own case, the man that 
pumps drives the horse, and the two of us can 
cover all our trees in two or three days. For 
large orchards of high-headed trees a tower 
is often built on the wagon, from the top of 
which one of the men can reach the tops of 
the trees while the other is spraying the lower 
branches from the ground. 
The nozzle is an important matter. The 
best of them get clogged up occasionally, 
causing loss of time in cleaning them out. 
The best kind is a brass nozzle of the disk 
type. If the nozzle is set on at an angle, it 
will be found easier to change the direction of 
the spray and to send it down into the calyx 
cups. 
If a young orchard is consistently sprayed 
from the start, there is no question but that it 
results in healthier trees and better fruit. 
Whether or not it pays to spray an old, neg- 
lected orchard is another question. Dean 
Bailey expresses doubts on the subject. Fot 
my own part, I believe it does, for the codling 
moth, at least. That is, if you don’t expect 
too much. 
I have been forced to tbe conclusion that it 
is next to impossible to get much more than 
50 per cent, of first quality fruit from an 
old apple orchard which for a score of years 
has been neglected. Spray and prune as you 
will, the old trees seem to have formed the 
habit of setti.ig a certain percentage of fruit 
that becomes second grade or culls. A^ou 
may spray twice in a season with arsenate of 
lead, and yet the codling moth has not been 
entirely defeated, while the railroad worm, 
once established on the land, is well nigh 
invulnerable, and the fungus sticketh like a 
brother to the gnarled old branches. 
Just to what extent the spraying pays I 
have never been able personally to demon- 
strate in accurate figures, but there is a man in 
Monson, Mass., who has made a test case of a 
single tree, and his figures are conclusive. 
It was a Fall Pippin tree which had never 
produced more than a barrel of apples in the 
past, and these apples were wormy and of 
small value. He applied the lead arsenate 
spray to his trees, and the cost for this single 
one was 25 cents, including time and material. 
The result was that while the tree blossomed 
about as heavily as it had in the past, and set 
about as much fruit, there was a very light 
June drop and a noticeable reduction in the 
number of worms. Four barrels of good apples 
were harvested, which were worth $1 a barrel 
in a year when apples were plenty. 
The owner had never got more than J 5 i for 
all the apples on the tree before; his increased 
receipts were therefore $7. Deducting the 
cost of the spraying, his increased revenue for 
the tree was $6.75. This is not high finance, 
but the Monson man has been thoroughly 
converted to a belief in lime-sulphur and 
arsenate of lead, and his annual program from 
now on will include at least three spray- 
While I can hardly believe that this per- 
centage would hold throughout an orchard of, 
say, 100 old trees, it comes as near to proving 
the case as any single instance can, and it 
illuminates another story told by Frank .A. 
Bates in “How to Make Old Orchards Profit- 
able.’’ Isham Buckmaster, of Fort Scott, 
Kansas, had a five-acre orchard containing 
200 apple trees of about twenty years’ growth, 
alive with apple diseases. Half of these trees 
he sprayed four times up to July ist. From 
the untreated half he got only poor apples. 
From the sprayed trees he picked 456 bushels 
of choice apples which were sold for $1.65 a 
bushel, bringing him ^752.40. He had neg- 
lected to thin his fruit, so he had also twenty- 
two barrels of small apples which he sold for 
cider. His total expenses were $60, including 
$33 paid for a spray pump which was good for 
many more seasons. Apparently, he must 
have earned at least an increase of ^500 for his 
spraying. 
I never like to trust too fully to these iso- 
lated instances, and I am free to confess that 
I have never been able to achieve such notable 
financial success. But I do know from my 
own experience that while I cannot count on 
1 30 per cent, perfect apples from my old trees, 
I can as a result of sprajnng, secure a paying 
crop of good Baldwins and greenings, includ- 
ing some of the fancy grade, while my neigh- 
bors who do not spray are still content to do 
business with the middle men at ^1.50 a 
barrel, or with the cider mill at 20 cents a 
hundred pounds. 
