1908. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
733 
WINTER IN FLORIDA. 
On page 651 a northern gardener asked 
if ho could go to Florida Winters and work 
a garden so as to pay expenses. The fol¬ 
lowing notes are from Florida people : 
On the whole, I do not think that any 
fault can be found with the Hope Farm 
man’s answer to W. C. F. on page 651. 
Still it is a fact, well attested, that that 
very thing is being done. But it cannot bo 
done by one who is not familiar with the 
methods by which success can be attained 
in Florida. I have at times remarked that 
I thought a man without any experience 
would succeed better in this State than an 
expert gardener. This is because the green¬ 
horn will know that he is ignorant, and will 
be willing to be instructed, while the expert 
knows better than the Florida gardener and 
is sure to blunder. A. I. Root described, in 
“Gleanings in Bee Culture,” the success at 
celery growing of a newcomer in this State 
in his tirst year. I do not doubt that his 
report was true, for he is a man in whom 
I have the utmost confidence; the result, as 
he reported it, was simply wonderful. But 
this is one of those exceptions which prove 
the rule. Probably where one man could do 
this, 999 would utterly fail. If you want 
to garden in Florida you would better work 
at least a year for some one who is success¬ 
ful before trying it for yourself, w. c. s. 
Switzerland, Fla. 
Florida is all right, even for W. C. F., 
page 651. Every degree of workman comes 
to Florida not always to better their finan¬ 
cial condition, but more frequently on ac¬ 
count of health. Twenty years ago I had 
a man working for me on Dong Island who, 
in November of every year, went to Florida 
for his health. He worked at ordinary labor 
at Tampa. Among our acquaintance a Ver¬ 
mont farmer brings wife and two children 
and acts as hotel watchman, a jeweler works 
for a liveryman, a carpenter works at his 
trade. In this place a peach and vegetable 
grower from Monroe Co., N. Y., is interested 
in oranges, a vineyardist from Niagara Co.; 
one from Chautauqua Co. and a peach 
grower from Suffolk Co., N. Y.—all have 
orange groves. An experienced vegetable 
grower who has been successful cannot help 
succeed here. lie should own his garden 
and come to it every Winter. A fair amount 
of capital is a necessity; $300 for a single 
man and upward of $500 for a family of 
four unless all are willing to turn in and 
work for others when necessary. Land may 
be rented with right of purchase, and some¬ 
times with a house, but we have known of 
families who camped in tents. There is not 
much rain from September to June. This 
makes it desirable to irrigate or select nat¬ 
urally moist land for the garden. Sanford 
is the center of the celery industry; Lake¬ 
land for strawberries; Wauchula for beans, 
strawberries and tomatoes. Buyers arc on 
the ground in season and pay cash for good 
stock. September and October are the 
months for planting in Do Soto Co. Beans 
at Intervals after September 1; strawberries 
between September 20 and November 1. 
Strawberries ripen from December 20 to 
April; some varieties as late as May. The 
prospective settler cannot be guided by 
everything lie hears or reads. Everyone 
who has been six weeks in Florida can tell 
you all about growing oranges, pineapples, 
strawberries and beans, but it is safer to 
advise only with some neighbor who has 
succeeded. The failures are numerous, but 
those who have made a happy choice of 
land, work with a will and fertilize judi¬ 
ciously, cannot fail to succeed. e. d. p. 
Avon Park, Fla. 
WHAT HELPED THE MELONS? 
I bought a dollar’s worth of Hoodoo 
melon seed and planted the same. But they 
seem to suffer from the same trouble as 
other melons do; the melons picked from 
good healthy vines gave very good satis¬ 
faction to my patrons. I am going to soak 
ground heavily with Bordeaux on about 100 
hills next year. I emptied contents of 
spray pump around one hill this past Sum¬ 
mer and the same withstood wilt and blight 
trouble much longer than any other hill of 
about 2,000, although something else may 
have been the cause. l. p. 
Ohio. 
I have a suspicion that the sediment in 
the pump he emptied was mostly lime, and 
that the lime was what helped the vine. 
Lime Is a mighty good thing in soil many 
times, and I suspect it was that instead of 
the copper that did the business. 
HEN ST FIELD. 
I know of no experiments with Bordeaux 
Mixture applied to the soil for the pur¬ 
pose of preventing melon wilt. Possibly 
such treatment might be effective, but this 
could be determined only by making a care¬ 
ful experiment. f. c. stewakt. 
Geneva Exp. Station. 
My experience along this line is limited 
to tomatoes and Rocky Ford muskmolons 
and I have as yet to succeed in keeping the 
plague in check; that is to my satisfaction. 
I usually spray four times for tomatoes, 
and at least five for melons, as we must 
have the very best for Atlantic City 
market. I never tried saturating the 
ground as the Ohio reader did, but am 
satisfied that a judicious use of Bordeaux 
Mixture on the foliage will somewhat pro¬ 
long the season and better fruit and more 
of it will be obtained, but the old disease 
will appear the following year even though 
the grower flood his whole farm. 
New Jersey. john casazza. 
I have never directly sprayed the ground 
around melon vines to prevent wilt or 
blight troubles, and so cannot speak from 
experience on the point which you raise. 
My tentative opinion must be based on my 
knowledge of the life histories of the agents 
of these two troubles. If L. F. sprayed 
both the vines and the ground of the hill 
that lived so long compared with the 
others, I might see how he did so well 
if the others were unsprayed. But as I 
understand the case he sprayed all of the 
vines and on this particular hill he used 
a very large amount of Bordeaux chiefly on 
the ground. If he got the results lie claims 
under the latter conditions, it leads mo to 
believe that his trouble was the bacterial 
wilt, rather than the blight mildew. How 
the blight mildew passes the Winter is 
not known, but some suppose, based on 
analogy with similar forms, by a Winter 
spore stage. This, though I have looked 
for under various conditions each season, I 
have never been able to find. If it is 
produced it would bo carried by the rubbish 
from the vines into the soil, and melons 
on this soil another year would stand a 
very good chance of becoming infested 
from it. Some support is given this view 
by an experiment of a Russian investigator 
who found plants grown under glass, in 
soil obtained from a field in which dis¬ 
eased plants had recently grown, became 
diseased; while others similarly grown on 
new soil did not. My experience, however, 
has been that under field conditions, even 
if the vines are on new land (and sup¬ 
posedly also on land that had been treated 
as in the case of your correspondent) the 
disease if at all prevalent elsewhere will be 
very soon carried in, by insects apparently. 
With the bacterial wilt, in which the 
bacteria mechanically clog the water-carry¬ 
ing di^cts and thus cut off the water sup¬ 
ply, it is believed that insects are largely 
responsible for inoculaling the plants with 
these bacteria, while eating or sucking the 
tissues for food. I have always thought 
that this inoculation took place largely 
from insects visiting the leaves. It may be, 
however, that the insects attacking the 
roots are chiefly responsible. The past 
Summer I saw some cucumber vines that 
were dying with what looked like the bac¬ 
terial wilt, but I was unable to find the 
bacteria in the ducts and the only suspi¬ 
cious cause I could find was insect injury 
to the roots. Now it is barely possible that 
the vigorous treatment your correspondent 
gave the soil kept away the soil insects 
from the roots, and in this way protected 
the plants from their injury and from in¬ 
oculation with the bacterial wilt. The 
fact that the wilt was quite bad, especially 
on not fully grown vines, this year in 
Connecticut and the blight-mildew was not 
injurious also favors this view. 
Conn. Exp. Station. g. p. Clinton. 
Killing Cabbage Worms. —You ask what 
to do to protect cabbage from worms after 
it has commenced to head and is not safe 
to use Paris-green. Dissolve a heaping tea¬ 
spoonful of saltpeter in a gallon of water 
and sprinkle or spray the cabbage. Repeat 
the operation whenever a fresh crop of 
worms appears. The solution kills all that 
it touches, and is harmless so far as using 
the cabbage is concerned. A small quantity 
of pyrethrum mixed with air-slaked lime 
and dusted on with a tomato can with a per¬ 
forated bottom is one of the best remedies 
I know of while cabbage is small. J. c. n. 
Blue Mound, Ill. 
Strawberry Runner Cutter. —The Hope 
Farm man speaks of using a piece of steel 
on a stick to cut the runners from his 
strawberry plants. This is probably much 
better than a hoe or knife, but there is a 
still better tool for the work. More than 
30 years ago, while growing strawberries 
for market in Indiana, I read in some agri¬ 
cultural paper an illustrated description of 
a tool for cutting the runners from straw¬ 
berry plants which seemed so practical that 
I had one made and used it for years with 
great satisfaction. It was made from a 
thin piece of steel; an old wood or bucksaw 
blade is just the thing. This is bent into 
a circle about a foot in diameter and riv¬ 
eted. It might be made adjustable to dif¬ 
ferent. sizes by punching a series of holes 
and using a small bolt with a thumb screw, 
but mine was riveted at a foot and proved 
satisfactory. What is to be the lower edge 
should be sharpened before it is riveted, 
then three braces are riveted to the upper 
edge and brought together in the middle and 
welded into a shank which is then put into 
a handle, a piece of an old fork handle or 
something similar of suitable length to suit 
the height of the person who is to handle 
it. One stroke with this tool will cut all 
the runners from a large hill. If the plants 
are small and you wish to cut every one 
it may be necessary to strike two or three 
times, bringing the edge of the tool close 
to the plant on different sides at each 
stroke. We grew our strawberries wholly 
in hills, finding that the ease of keeping 
them clean and the increased size of the 
fruit made it the most profitable. 
Switzerland, Fla. w. O. a. 
Carey’s 
CEMENT 
r | a O CLAIM roofing durability is one thing; to PROVE it 
is another. Carey claims are supported by the 'LIME- 
PROOF testimony of bona fide users, as witness the following: 
“ Twenty-one years without a leak, and it 
looks as good today as when we put it on.” 
That's what W. E. Baldwin , of Youngstown, O., wrote last 
April, and he is only one of thousands of satisfied users 
of Carey's Roofing. 
Why buy an inferior roof, bound to leak in a year or so? Why not 
spend a trifle more for a roof that, with Ims trouble, will last as long 
as the building stands? Besides Carey’s Roofing is equally adapted 
for flat or steep surfaces and may bo laid OVER old leaky roofs. 
Carey’s Roofing is made of Carey’s special process Asphalt Com¬ 
pound, and fire resisting cement, with best woolen felt and burlap 
as a binder and protector. The Carey patent lap completely covers 
nail heads forming a perfect, permanent and neat union of sheet 
to sheet and roofing to roof-board. 
Write the manufacturer diroct for FREE sample, descriptive 
booklet, prices and nearest distributing warehouse. Address 
THE PHILIP CAREY COMPANY 
42 Wayne Avenue, CINCINNATI, O. 
Agricultural 
Lime 
Fresh Burned—in Bulk 
—♦— 
Hydrated 
Lime 
In 50 lb. Paper Sacks 
-4- 
Analysis: 
97.08 Lime 
.ill Magnesia 
.4 7 Carbonic Acid 
.56 Alumina & Iron 
1.58 Water «fc Undetermined 
100 . ()()«( 
-♦- 
WRITE FOR PRICES 
-4- 
The double layer of glass does it 
Lets in the light always. 
Never has to be covered or uncovered; no 
boards or mats needed. 
Retains the heat, excludes the cold. 
Saves three-fourths of the labor and expense 
and makes stronger and earlier plants than 
single-glass sash. 
Ask for catalog "O’*. It tells all about it. 
Sunlight Double-Glass Sash Co. 
SOS Floyd Street LOUISVILLE, K Y. 
NEW JERSEY LIME CO., 
HAMBURG, N. J. 
The cleanest- 
lightest,—and 
most comfortable 
SLICKER 
at the same time 
cheapest in the 
end because it 
wears longest 
Everywhere 
Every garmenl quar- 
anleed waterproof 
v Calalog free 
A J TOWER CO BOSTON USA 
TOWER CANADIAN CO LIMITED TOQQNTQ CAN 
SAVE HALF YOUR FUEL 
or give you double the amount 
of heat from the same fuel, if 
you will give it a trial, or we 
will refund the money paid 
for it. Write for Booklet on 
heating homes. 
ROCHESTER RADIATOR CO. 
39 Furnace St.,Rochester,N.Y. 
Prices from 
$2 to $12 
For hard or 
Soft Coal 
wood or gas 
Fits any 
Stove or 
Furnace 
THERE ARE NONE "JUST AS GOOD” 
WHEN YOU BUY A LANTERN INSIST ON A “ DI ETZ ” 
MADE BV R. E. DIETZ COM PA NY NEW YORK 
Largest Makers of Lanterns in the World 
Esta blished 1840 
PIONEERS AND LEADERS 
“The Old Reliable” 
The Best | 
Fencing 
for farmers’needs, the I 
most satisfactory and sub-1 
stantial—and theebeapest, are I 
FliOST HEAVY WEIGHT 
KNOCKED HOWS and WOVEN | 
W1IIR FEMURS. Catalogue free. 
WE PAY FREIGHT, 
The Frost Wire Fence Co., 
Cleveland, Ohio 
A LABOR SAVING device 
for WOMEN 1» a 
RELIANCE MOP 
WRINGER 
Do not wring a til thy mop 
with your hands: nor stoop 
over a pall of dirty water and 
lnhnlo the offensive fumes. 
Everyone expresses their <ie- 
_light with the “Kelianee.’.' 
r? Every wringer guaranteed to 
give satisfaction. 
LEE CHAIR CO., Box C, Oneida, N.Y, 
THE ORIGINAL MT. GILEAD 
HYDRAULIC PRESS 
produces more and better 
cidor from less apples, and 
is a bigger money maker 
than any other press. 
Sizes 25 to 400 barrels 
per day. Also Steam 
Evaporators, A p- 
plo Butter Cook¬ 
ers, Engine*, 
Boilers, Saw¬ 
mills, otc. Cata¬ 
log free. Made 
THE HYDRAULIC PRESS 
Dept. o7 Mt. Gilead, Ohio 
or Room 124 U 
t 39 Cortlandt St., N. Y. 
One Man Alone 
Suilds Fence TTsirLg 
"0 M " Wire Stretcher 
A strong, durable tool, simple and 
efficient in operation, and economi¬ 
cal because it saves time, money, 
labor and repairs. Holds wire taut 
as desired while operator staples. 
Positively cannot fail. Should bo 
used on every farm. Send for the 
“ O-M ” to-day. Price $3.00 with 
order. Transportation paid, Booklet Free. 
O-M ” WIRE STRETCHER AGENCY, 
Dept. R, Parnassus, Penna, 
Factory Price 
On Empire 
'Big Wire” Fence 
Freight prepaid for everybody far 
as Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 
Uouble the life of 
little wire fences. 
High carbon steel, 
heavily galvanized. Fence to turn 
anything and to last, Note the 
crimped tie at crossings. Send foe 
sample today to. 
BOND STEEL POST CO.. Adrian. Mich, 
This 
Size 
No. 9 
ORNAMENTAL WIRE and STEEL FENCE 
Cheaper than wood, 
combining strength 
anil art. For lawns, 
ch u relies, cemeteries 
Semi for P U E E 
CATALOG. Addiosa 
THE WARD FENCE CO., 
Box700 Decatur.Iuil 
