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NEW YORK, OCTOBER 6, 1900 
FIGHTING THE ASPARAGUS RUST. 
WILL BORDEAUX MIXTURE DO IT ? 
A Big Battery on Wheels. 
A WHOLESALE SPRAYING JOB—With Mr. F. 
A. Sirrine, entomologist of the Queens County branch 
of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Sta¬ 
tion, I visited the farm of Mr. A. L. Downs, of Matti- 
tuck, on the eastern end of Long Island, where some 
practical experiments are being made with Bordeaux 
Mixture as a preventive of Asparagus rust. The rust 
has made great havoc in this section of the Island, 
and, unless some effective remedy is applied, the in¬ 
dustry will be practically wiped out. The experiments 
carried out on Mr. Downs’s farm show that the trouble 
can be checked by a liberal spraying with Bordeaux. 
It would be an easy matter to go over a small patch 
two or three times a week with a hand sprayer, but 
where one has several acres the problem is a different 
one. The plants grow four or five feet high, and some 
are broad-spreading and in thick bunches, so that to 
spray a large field by hand, and as thoroughly as 
necessary, would cost more than the 
crop is worth. The spraying must be 
started as soon as cutting is stopped 
in the early Summer, and continued 
well into the Fall. The plan of mowing 
off the whole field and burning the tops 
will destroy a great amount of the rust 
spores, but it has a bad effect on the 
plants, weakening the roots and caus¬ 
ing them to throw out a large number 
of small shoots. A thorough job of 
spraying means that every stalk, 
branch and bit of foliage must be 
touched with the mixture. This is per¬ 
haps more than can be expected, but 
any places left unprotected are liable 
to attack by the disease. 
A GOOD POWER SPRAYER.—For 
some time Mr. Sirrine and Mr. Downs 
have been studying this question in or¬ 
der to learn just what was needed in 
the shape of a power sprayer to do this 
job thoroughly, quickly and with the 
least possible expense; and a machine 
been devised which does the work ad¬ 
mirably. It is a tank holding about 250 
gallons, mounted high on trucks. A 
chain gear connected with one of the 
hind wheels runs the pump and spray¬ 
ing apparatus. It can be used to spray 
one row only, or, when fully rigged, 
will cover two, straddling one and 
thoroughly doctoring half a row on 
each side. Two men are required to run 
it to advantage, one to drive the horses and the other 
to attena to the pump. Two horses draw it all right 
when fully loaded. The pump is geared so that a 
very slow motion of the team will give all the force 
needed, and there is a safety-valve attachment to pre¬ 
vent the pump from working too powerfully when 
the horses move rapidly, as in going down hill. The 
Deming nozzle is used, and 24 of these, some of which 
can be turned at any desired angle to suit peculiari- 
ities of wind or height of grass, throw a fine spray 
against the rows in every direction. Every plant 
passes through a fog as dense as a Newfoundland 
Fishing-Bank mist, and the only places that escape a 
thorough wetting are an occasional small spot on the 
inside of a stalk where the bunches are unusually 
thick. The machine is shown in operation at Fig. 249. 
WILL BORDEAUX DO THE BUSINESS?—That is 
the question of most importance. Mr. Sirrine is not 
going to make any definite statements until the test 
has been carried out a little farther, as he does not 
wish to influence growers to go to the expense of any 
expensive spraying operation unless it will surely 
clear out the rust. Yet some of the results obtained 
on this farm thus far are striking. In one field a 
square section was left unsprayed, and its brown and 
dead look is in striking contrast with the healthy 
green of the part that was treated with Bordeaux. In 
another field every other row was left to fight the 
battle for itself, and it made a poor showing. One 
man who was looking on said: “Those rows show as 
distinctly as the stripes on the flag,” and it was so. 
The unsprayed rows were dwarfed and brown. But it 
will not do to put on a little Bordeaux in the middle 
of July, and think that one dose will do the business. 
Asparagus grows so rapidly that even when sprayed 
every week young shoots will come up and get infest¬ 
ed with the rust in the period when it is most preva¬ 
lent. I noticed brown stalks in some of the large 
green bunches, and was told that they were the young 
growth that had come up between spraying times and 
caught the disease. It is also difficult to get the mix¬ 
ture to stick on these quick-growing young sprouts 
where there is but little foliage. It is apt to gather 
in large drops on the stems and roll off. After the 
plants get hard and woody they become somewhat 
rust-proof, and such frequent sprayings would not 
he needed if it were not for the young growth that 
is constantly springing up. The preparation used in 
spraying is the ordinary Bordeaux with the addition 
of a resin solution, the chief benefit of which is to 
make the mixture stick betcer. It does stick, too, like 
a porous plaster. The Summer rust has a reddish- 
brown appearance, and Mr. Sirrine pointed out some 
stalks on which the Darluca, a fungus enemy of the 
rust, was working. Unfortunately there is not enough 
of this disease at present to go around. A little later 
the rust becomes black, and in this stage passes the 
Winter, and is ready for business another year. 
CLEAR OUT THE WEEDS AND BUSHES.—On 
farms that have been largely used in growing aspara¬ 
gus there are more or less volunteer plants by the 
roadsides and in the corners of fields. These make 
harboring places for the rust and other diseases, and 
should he carefully looked after. Weeds and bushes 
around fences and along roadsides are an abomina¬ 
tion anyway. It is some trouble to keep them down, 
but still more to rid the fields of the foul seeds that 
they sow, to say nothing of the bugs, worms and plant 
diseases which they furnish a home for. It costs 
something to maintain a quarantine system at a great 
seaport like New York, bui no sensible man grudges 
the money expended to prevent diseases from getting 
a foothold in this country. Why not quarantine the 
farm against weeds and worms as nearly as possible? 
The wild cherry trees seen along some highways, 
loaded with Black knot and bushels of tent-caterpil¬ 
lars are a nuisance that should be done away with by 
law. _ w. w. h. 
CABBAGE SEED ON LONG ISLAND. 
Unlike a straw hat, a cabbage has no disposition to 
go to seed the first year. It must rest through the 
Winter, and, when set out in Spring, as ready to take 
a fresh hold and go into the seed business. Oases are 
reported where young plants which had been stunted 
on account of unfavorable conditions after transplant¬ 
ing, have mistaken this rest for the 
Winter vacation, and tried to produce 
seed the first year; hut (they made 
about as poor a job of it as people usu¬ 
ally do Who go at their work in a half¬ 
hearted way. Long Island is said to 
produce a large percentage of the cab¬ 
bage seed grown in the United States. 
Some men there have inherited the 
business from their father, and fol¬ 
lowed it all their lives until they have 
it down to a science. No particular 
treatment is required the first year ex¬ 
cept the good cultivation and care 
needed to produce marketable heads. 
It will not do to save the inferior 
heads for seed purposes, as this pro¬ 
cess would iL time greatly degenerate 
the strain. This is true of any other 
seed. It will get poor quickly if left 
to itself, and only the most careful 
selection will keep it up to the highest 
mark. A big hill of potatoes may 
sometimes be raised from a very small 
tuber, but if this plan is kept up long, 
one will soon have only small potatoes 
to plant "~r eat either. A common- 
sense rule would iseem to be to save 
seed from just as near the ideal pro¬ 
duct as possible, whether cabbage, po¬ 
tatoes or corn. During the Winter the 
cabbages intended for seed are stored 
in trenches in the field. The trenches 
are ventilated with straw, and are on 
dry ground to lessen the chance of rot. A moderate 
amount of freezing does not hurt them. Early in 
Spring the heads are gashed and set out again and 
cultivated the same as the first year. After being 
gathered the seed is spread on the barn floor or some 
other convenient place to dry, and is afterwards thor¬ 
oughly cleaned. Prices obtained for the seed range 
from 30 to 50 cents per pound according to the va¬ 
riety, the kindls that are least productive of seed bring¬ 
ing the highest figure. Considerable money may be 
stored away in small compass in a crop of cabbage 
seed. One grower showed me his yield, which was 
spread on canvas on the upper barn floor. There was 
probably not far from a ton of cleaned seed, worth 
from ?600 to $1,000—quite an amount of money for 
one load of produce. At present prices a man would 
have to sell 70 tons of good hay; 1,300 bushels of 
wheat; 1,600 bushels of potatoes; 7,700 pounds of hops, 
or 2,500 bushels of apples, to get $1,000. And a dairy¬ 
man who is shipping his product to the New York 
market would have to send 500 pounds of butter or 
SPRAYING ASPARAGUS WITH BORDEAUX MIXTURE. Fig. 249. 
