638 
THE RURAL, NEW -YORKER 
places when we furrowed for planting, I fully ex¬ 
pected (from everything I had ever read on the 
subject), to have a fine crop of scabby potatoes, but 
instead I had the best crop of fine large smooth 
potatoes that was dug in this vicinity last season. 
OHIO BRIDGE WITH CONCRETE FLOOR. Fig. 237. 
The good yield in a dry season I lay to the natural 
moisture of the ground, but the very excellent quality 
of the potatoes I attributed to the lime. This year 
after I finish planting I am going to sow finely 
ground limestone at the rate of two tons or more per 
acre and cultivate in. My ground this year is the 
finest rich sandy loam and my seed, all from Maine, 
is, some of it, very scabby. j. t. h. 
ConnecticuL 
R. N.-Y.—We want all the lime experience we can 
get. Has anyone ever put lime directly upon the 
potato crop? In the above case the* soil may have 
been so sour to begin with that the lime did not 
make it fully alkaline. 
A BRIDGE OF IRON AND CONCRETE. 
The bridge shown in the picture. Fig. 237, is located 
about two and a half miles north of Hillsboro, Ohio, 
and is 113 feet long, with a 14-foot roadway. The 
bridge is of the suspension type, constructed of iron 
and steel, ■while the roadway is concrete, no wood 
being used anywhere. The floor or roadway cost 
25 cents per square foot, or a total of $370. The 
Concrete 
concrete is supported by nine-inch “I” beams running 
lengthwise of the bridge, and between the “I” beams 
and resting on the lower flanges are the arched 
sheet iron frames to support the concrete while 
hardening. The diagram shows the plan of con¬ 
struction, and it will be noticed that even over the 
“I” beams the concrete is five inches thick. The floor 
is finished rough, but is not marked excepting over 
the supporting "Cross sills. The bridge should last 
for years, and is in keeping with the well-made stone 
road passing over it. w. e. duckwell. 
Ohio. 
THE WEEDER SEEDER.—Every year we have 
letters from farmers who want some new implement 
for putting in grass seed, especially clover and Al¬ 
falfa. There are some very good seeders on the 
market, yet none of them appears to be entirely satis¬ 
factory. With Alfalfa, and clover in particular, 
there is a demand for a light tool which will scratch 
the seed in just the right way. A bulletin of the 
Ohio Experiment Station gives the picture shown at 
Fig. 239. This implement is called a weeder seeder; 
WEEDER SEEDER FOR ALFALFA AND CLOVER. 
Fig. 239. 
the seed drill running in front and followed by a 
weeder, with handle so arranged as to hold the imple¬ 
ment under control. Some lighter soils are well 
adapted to the use of a weeder, more so than the 
heavier clay. On such soils the implement here 
shown would, no doubt, prove useful, for the scratch¬ 
ing action of the weeder gives just about the right 
covering for the seed. 
COUNTRY MERCHANTS AND PARCELS 
POST OPPOSITION. 
Not all country storekeepers are opposed to a par¬ 
cels post. The other day I asked our local merchant 
where he stood on the question, and he said he didn’t 
know. “I can’t tell how it would work out. If it 
should result in all specialties and light goods being 
bought in New York or Chicago, so that we could 
handle nothing but heavy goods, you people would 
have to pay us five or six prices or else we would be 
driven out of business, and you would have to get in 
your supplies the best way you could, instead of find¬ 
ing them right here at home.” He alluded to what 
has been printed about meeting mail order competition 
by selling on mail order terms; cash many days before 
delivery of the goods and ordering from a printed 
page instead of selecting by hand and eye. He said 
hardly anybody would like to buy everything and 
many people would buy nothing that way. 
And here he showed himself a philosopher. He 
said, “I am not worrying about this because I did all 
my worrying when rural free delivery was established. 
I had not the slightest doubt that the taking of the 
post office away from here meant the beginning of the 
end of my business. But we all sent out wagons and, 
VIGOROUS TWO-YEAR TREE BEFORE PRUNING. 
Fig. 240. 
speaking for myself, trade has increased in a very 
gratifying way. Maybe the parcels post will prove 
just as good a thing for us as for the farmers and 
the city consumers. Anyway, I am losing no sleep 
over it.” h. a. s. 
Niagara County, N. Y. 
COMMERCIAL SPRAYING. 
As spraying has become an absolute necessity in 
most localities where it is desired to grow any fruit, 
and as the average farmer has neither the time nor 
knowledge to do this work properly the commercial 
sprayer has made his appearance. This little valley 
contains several hundred farm orchards, of perhaps 
40 bearing trees on the average. Since the advent of 
the San Jose scale, the matter of preserving these 
many orchards has become a serious problem. The 
farmers realize that these apple trees have not only 
furnished an abundance of apples, apple butter and 
vinegar for family use (not to mention hog feed) 
but that the trees have been the source of consider¬ 
able financial profit besides. In fact the apple orchard 
is regarded as the most profitable field on the farm, 
considering its size, as several hundred bushels of 
Winter apples are frequently harvested from one of 
these farm orchards. The apples generally find ready 
sale. A few years ago when the scale first commenced 
to do its deadly work in an orchard here and there 
throughout the valley, the farmers thus afflicted com¬ 
menced to scratch around for some means of saving 
their trees. Most of them purchased barrel pumps, 
with which they have been doing more or less effective 
spraying. But hundreds who were not so seriously 
threatened did nothing until the commercial sprayer 
made his appearance. The pioneer in this work here 
was a young man with a first-class barrel outfit 
mounted on a cart which was drawn by one horse. 
With another man to help he went around among the 
May 25, 
farmers and sprayed their trees for them, charging 
three to four cents a gallon for the dilute lime-sulphur 
and about 40 cents an hour for his time. This ma.i 
still does some spraying and the system is a good oni 
where the trees are n»t too tall. With one nozzle h^ 
empties a barrel in about one hour. He has to throw 
a straight stream over the tops of the trees. 
Then came the gasoline man. This was also a 
young man, and with visions in his head of easy for¬ 
tunes to be made at the spraying business. He pur¬ 
chased a gasoline outfit and started out to spray at 21 
cents a tree. Under proper management this price 
would hardly pay expenses, while under poor man¬ 
agement the young fellow soon discovered that he had 
struck anything but a gold mine. Forthwith he pro¬ 
ceeded to charge almost any figure that he thought 
the farmer would pay. A number of farmers were 
thus “stung” by paying more for the one spraying 
than the apple crop was worth. This, of course, dis¬ 
gusted them for a time with all spraying operations. 
The sprayer has since become bankrupt. Still, it had 
the good effect of interesting several other persons 
in the commercial spraying problem, and led them to 
believe that this enterprise could be made profitable 
for both the farmer and the sprayer. A year ago the 
writer formed partnership with another young man 
who is something of a machinist, and as I had re¬ 
ceived some spraying experience in my own orchards 
vve felt fairly well equipped to perform spraying oper¬ 
ations on a large scale. We purchased a gasoline power 
spraying outfit which has cost us altogether about 
$250. We furnish the spray liquid and apply it to the 
trees for six cents a gallon and allow five per cent 
discount for cash. We also get board and horse feed 
while on the job. This seems rather excessive, but 
when one considers the amount of money invested and 
the comparatively short season that such an outfit is 
of use, and also the wear on the machinery, which is 
considerable, it does not seem expensive at all. The 
maximum cost of spraying a full-grown apple tree is 
about 50 cents, though the cost is usually much less. 
We charge the same for the Bordeaux-arsenate spray 
in its season as we do for the dilute lime-sulphur. 
We apply about 100 gallons an hour with two leads 
of hose, which have two nozzles at the end of each 
10-foot extension rod. So we can spray the largest 
farm orchards in the community in a few hours or 
half a day at most. We have had good success, 
though the system has some serious drawbacks. We 
find it hardly as profitable as we expected on our part. 
The farmers generally seem very well pleased with 
the results, but the price is almost as high as would 
be profitable to them. The work is nasty, to say the 
least, though we are learning to protect ourselves bet¬ 
ter than at first. I wear steam-proof gloves and an 
ordinary tin dust protector over my nose and mouth. 
Unfavorable weather conditions hinder our work very 
much. Two days a week is frequently all the spray¬ 
ing weather we have. We were fairly swamped with 
orders this year, as nearly everyone has come to 
realize that spraying with lime-sulphur is an abso¬ 
lute necessity to preserve the trees. However, our 
spraying season was rather short this year. In the 
Winter it is too cold much of the time, while during 
early Spring it gets too muddy to haul our heavy 
outfit over roads and through orchards. Later the 
“March winds blow,” which generally continue well 
into April. Thus it will be seen that we have no 
'r 
< 
TWO-YEAR TREE AFTER PRUNING. Fig. 241. 
continuous season, but have to pick out the favorable 
days, over a period of several months. 
Does it pay? Yes, if properly managed; it is better 
than to lose the orchards. The commercial fruit 
grower can afford his own spraying outfit, Put the 
farmer must largely depend upon the commercial 
sprayer to save his orchard for him. david plank. 
Pennsylvania. 
