164 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
February 20 
HORTICULTURAL BRIEFS. 
Transplanting Evergreens. —It is a 
general experience that the month of 
May, just as growth starts, is the most 
favorable time to transplant White 
pines and similar evergreens in this 
latitude. They should be taken up with 
just as little disturbance of the roots 
as possible, securing a good ball of 
earth around the mass of roots, if the 
nature of the soil allows, keeping it 
together with moist burlap or fertilizer 
sacks tied around the ball and the main 
roots while the trees are being moved. 
They should be carefully set in large 
holes at the same level which they nat¬ 
urally grew, and good top soil well 
worked and rammed about the roots 
without bruising them. No manure or 
fertilizer should be put in the hole or 
about the roots, but a thick mulch of 
litter or strawy stable manure placed 
about the tree as far as the limbs ex¬ 
tend after planting as above stated will 
do more to make the trees live and 
assure good growth than any other 
treatment that has been devised. 
Starting Nut Seedlings. —Chestnuts, 
walnuts and hickorynuts for seed pur¬ 
poses may be planted at once before 
drying out, or may be packed in boxes 
of moist sand, covered with wire net¬ 
ting to keep out vermin and stored in 
some outbuilding where the sand may 
freeze. The nuts should keep per¬ 
fectly well under these conditions, and 
may be planted as early in Spring as 
the ground can be worked. When 
planting nuts of these varieties the soil 
must be thoroughly plowed and fined 
in the usual manner, and the nuts 
planted in drills three or more feet 
apart to permit horse culture. The 
nuts may be placed four to six inches 
apart in the drills and covered very 
lightly, not more than an inch or two 
of moist earth being placed over them. 
If well kept they should soon come up, 
when clean culture should be com¬ 
menced and carried out to the end of 
the growing season. No weeds should 
be allowed to grow at any time during 
the growing season. At the end of the 
second or third year they should be 
large enough to transplant. Pine seed, 
on the other hand, is best kept per¬ 
fectly dry in a cool room until Spring, 
when it may be sown broadcast or in 
drills in a finely prepared seed bed, 
covering it about a quarter of an inch 
deep with fine sifted soil. The soil should 
not be allowed to dry out, and when 
the seedlings appear, which they may 
be expected to do in the course of two 
or three weeks, a screen of muslin 
should be used to shade the bed to pre¬ 
vent burning from the sun. They 
should be very carefully weeded for a 
year or two and the ground kept loose 
and mellow about them. At the end of 
the second or third year they should be 
large enough to transplant to nursery 
rows. 
Propagating California Privet.— 
We have many times published methods 
of propagating California privet. It 
may be grown from cuttings both of 
the green and mature wood, as well as, 
from seeds, but seedlings have the objec¬ 
tion of not being uniform in character. 
The most practical means is to take 
cuttings of the young wood the size of 
a lead pencil or smaller, sometime in 
mid-Winter, when the leaves have 
fallen or can be easily stripped from 
the twigs. The cuttings are made about 
eight inches long, tied in bundles of 100 
each, large ends all one way. These 
cuttings are buried in sandy soil, the 
large or butt end upwards, and cov¬ 
ered with an inch or two of sand or 
light soil, over wftich is placed a very 
light protection of straw or litter. They 
are not. injured by freezing, and the 
object of placing them thus is to pre¬ 
vent the tops from starting with the 
first heat of Spring. When the ground 
can be well worked in Spring, it is 
plowed or otherwise fined in a very 
thorough manner, rows struck out three 
feet to permit of horse culture. The 
cuttings should by this time be well 
callused over and then firmly planted 
in these rows about six inches apart, 
setting them deeply, so that only one or 
two buds of the tip appear above the 
surface. They generally root well 
under such conditions, and only require 
clean culture, and freedom from weeds 
to make quite bushy plants by Fall. 
They are used for hedges when one or 
two years old, setting them in roomy 
trenches and placing them not over a 
foot apart for best results. 
Rain Water from Tar Roofs. —Rain 
water from tar-coated roofs is quite 
likely to injure vegetation, especially 
plants as tender as those grown in 
greenhouses, for some months after the 
roof is laid. The danger lessens with 
time. When the water is entirely free 
from smell and color it may not do 
much harm. We should, however, pre¬ 
fer water drained from some other 
surface. 
Plum Rot. —Very little can be done 
to check plum rot after it has appeared. 
The disease is already in the fruit, and 
makes such rapid progress that nothing 
will check it. Something is gained by 
thinning the trees not yet affected so 
that they do not touch, and by picking 
as the fruit begin to color or before fully 
ripe. Plum rot may be largely pre¬ 
vented by spraying the fruits before it 
appears with weak Bordeaux Mixture 
made up with not more than three 
pounds each lime and copper sulphate- 
to 50 gallons of water. It is well to 
begin spraying when the plums are not 
larger than peas and repeat the appli¬ 
cation every two weeks or after every 
heavy rain until nearly ripe. It is also 
thought to be good practice to spray 
the trees with full strength Bordeaux 
Mixture, six pounds each copper sul¬ 
phate and lime to 50 gallons of water 
in the Spring just before the buds be¬ 
gin to open. 
Starting a Lawn. —As a rule, it is 
best to dig up lawn ground and sow 
the grass seed in early Spring as soon 
as the soil is in good condition, though 
good lawns are made as late as June 
and again in September. Good lawn 
seed or a mixture of Kentucky Blue and 
Red-top grasses; at the rate of one 
pound each to five square rods should 
be sowed and well raked in. After the 
young grass has grown an inch or two 
high a light dressing of sulphate of 
ammonia, which can be procured from 
any dealer in fertilizers, would do con¬ 
siderable good in the way of stimu¬ 
lating the grass and killing out the 
chick weed. Sulphate of ammonia looks 
very much like common salt, and may 
be scattered thinly over the lawn whe'n 
the grass is wet with dew. 
Cherry Trees Dropping Leaves.— 
There was considerable complaint last 
year of cherry trees dropping their 
foliage. It is probably due to fungus 
attacks promoted by the very damp and 
rainy Spring weather. Usually no great 
damage is done, and there is practically 
nothing to do in the case, as the trees 
will very likely put out new foliage 
later in the season. The trouble might 
to some extent have been prevented by 
spraying with Bordeaux Mixture, five 
pounds each copper sulphate and lime 
to 50 gallons of water, but there is 
little use in doing so after the leaves 
begin to fall. The trees will usually 
recover and show little, if any, bad 
effects from the attack the next year. 
Primary School on Spraying. 
P. M. S.j New Canaan, Conn. — Please 
give me advice on spraying an old apple 
orchard and the best insecticides to use. 
Do you approve of scraping the trees? 
Ans. —That is a fair sample of dozens 
of questions which come to us every 
week. _ We assume that they are all 
asked in good faith. Anyone who has 
thought much about spraying will see 
that here is need of knowledge to ask a 
question properly. Before we can 
answer we must know what is the mat¬ 
ter with the orchard. If this man said 
“I am sick and do not feel well—what 
medicine shall I take?” we could not 
help him until we knew what caused 
the illness. In the same way we must 
know what is the matter with these 
trees. Is it a disease, or do insects 
cause the trouble? It may be that they 
need pruning or feeding or cultivating. 
If insects are to be killed what are 
they? We must know that, for if they 
eat the foliage or fruit they must be 
poisoned. If they are scale or sucking 
insects the poisons will not destroy 
them. They must be sprayed with some¬ 
thing that will kill them by contact— 
like lime and sulphur or oil. A good 
many old apple trees have stopped grow¬ 
ing. They need to be pruned so as to 
have the dead wood cut out. Then the 
soil should be broken up and cultivated 
and manure or fertilizer supplied. Most 
likely the trees are troubled with blight. 
In that case Bordeaux Mixture will help 
them. In most of such old orchards the 
Codling worm is bad. This is the worm 
that bores a nasty hole to the core of 
the apple. To fight this worm Paris- 
green or some other form of arsenic is 
sprayed over the trees. If the trees are 
affected with scale insects either lime 
and sulphur or oil should be used. All 
these things will be made clear in The 
R. N.-Y. in time to use them. If you 
can send us samples of the wood we can 
tell .you about the scale. If the apples 
are wormy let us know that. 
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For HEAVY LIFTING 
You alone can do heavy lifting about your place 
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l86Viaduct, Cleveland. O. 
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SILVER KING BARLEY 
Wisconsin Isfamed as the best bar¬ 
ley state In the Union. Certain 
It Is that It produces the heaviest 
yielding barleys on earth. 
OF 60 VARIETIES 
tested by the Wisconsin Agrlcul 
tural Station, Salzer’s Silver King 
Barley heads the list as the biggest 
ylelder! That's a record we are 
proud ofl But it’s what Salzer’s 
seeds do everywhere. 
BEARDLESS 
BARLEY 
The barley of 
your dreams; no 
beards; easy to 
harvest, yielding 
In New York state 
121 bushels per 
acre. 
EmperorWilliam 
OAT 
Our now EmperorWll- 
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Almost as great as the 
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Big trial package, 6o 
SALZER’S BILLION DOLLAR GRASS AND TEOSINTE 
Billion Dollar Gross covered Itself with glory In 1908. It’s hay crop to the 
United States alone Is estimated at $10,000,000.00. It will be much more for 
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Balzer's 20th Century strains of clover and timothy seed stand all alone In 
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Or for 10c in stamps we mall free of all costs samples of Silver King Bar¬ 
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never seen by you before. 
CROSSE WIS. 
