124 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
SPRAYING FOR BRIGHT FRUIT 
J. A. Stevens 
At Mr. Yothers’ suggestion, about a 
year ago I began co-operating with him 
in some spraying demonstrations in Mr. 
Knight’s grapefruit grove near Safety 
Harbor; there had been a good deal of 
trouble with rust and what we call shark 
skin. As a result, Mr. Yothers came 
over at our request, looked the grove over 
and suggested an outline of spraying. He 
inspected the grove and told us along 
about the first of April we had better be¬ 
gin about the middle of April, so we be¬ 
gan spraying the trees with a lime sul¬ 
phur spray, giving the first application the 
middle of April last year. We sprayed 
the trees again about the middle of June. 
The third spraying was done the last week 
in July. 
These three sprayings were all that was 
really necessary to keep the fruit bright, 
but we did spray the fourth time, the 
second week in September, hoping it 
would help to color up the fruit, because 
one of the difficulties had been the fruit 
did not want to color, but remained green¬ 
ish until late in the season. 
The spray that was used was sulpho- 
citrol, at a strength of i to ioo. This 
spray was used on nearly all of the grove. 
Soluble sulphur was also used in one 
•section of the grove of about five acres. 
The results of both sprayings were satis¬ 
factory, so far as bright fruit was con¬ 
cerned. 
We found that the cost of spraying 
each time, was an average of 7.8c per 
tree. The total cost of the four sprayings 
was 31.2c per tree. The average pro¬ 
duction of the trees was 6j4 boxes; there¬ 
fore, the cost per box was 4.8c; the total 
cost of the spraying. 
When this fruit was gathered and 
shipped, it was graded into four grades; 
the names of these grades were fancy for 
the first, bright for the second, russet for 
the third and plain for the fourth. The 
plain represented that fruit which had a 
greenish tinge. We did not want to put 
the greenish fruit in with the bright and 
fancy fruit, so we made a fourth grade. 
Mr. Yothers had stated to us in the be¬ 
ginning that it was difficult in co-operat¬ 
ing with the growers, to get them to leave 
a check plot large enough to get definite 
deductions. He asked us to leave a part 
of the trees unsprayed all through the 
season, to see what the results would be; 
consequently we set aside four rows of 
trees. These four rows each contained 
forty-one trees. We left twenty-one trees 
in each row unsprayed all through the 
season; twenty trees in each row we 
sprayed; this gave us eighty-four trees 
not sprayed and eighty trees sprayed in 
the same four rows. These four rows of 
trees all had the same treatment in every 
way; the same fertilizer, the same culti¬ 
vation; all just alike except in the matter 
of spraying. 
When Mr. Yothers asked me to pre¬ 
pare a short talk on this subject, we 
planned to pick two cars of fruit, hoping 
