ii8 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
course makes all the fruit somewhat smal¬ 
ler than it would otherwise be. 
There is some experimental evidence 
existent to show that the injury is much 
greater than these figures would indi¬ 
cate. In 1911 the fruit from a row of 
trees sprayed with oil emulsion in Miay 
was 50 per cent larger than the fruit 
from adjoining rows which were left 
unsprayed. By actual measurement 66 
of the sprayed fruit made the same bulk 
as 99 of the unsprayed; owing to the fact 
that the spraying was done too late to pro¬ 
duce entirely bright fruit the sprayed 
fruit was graded by an orange buyer as a 
high grade of golden russet. No doubt if 
the spraying had been done earlier or 
done with lime and sulphur solution in¬ 
stead of the oil emulsion the difference 
<*. 
would have been greater than it actually 
was. 
This will, no doubt, to a large extent 
account for the small number of boxes 
of fruit shipped from this State in 1911, 
since it is a fact that from 85 to 90 per 
cent of the fruit were russets. In fact 
much of the fruit was sold as black rus¬ 
sets. It is safe to say that this reduction 
in size is close to 25 per cent of the total 
crop. In other words there would be 
approximately 25 per cent more oranges 
shipped from this state if no rust mite 
was present. 
In addition to the loss occasioned by 
the reduction in size of the fruit, there is 
a difference in the market price when these 
different kinds of fruit are sold. I am 
informed by some expert orange sales¬ 
man that it is very nearly impossible to 
sell russet fruit before the holidays, in 
fact the difference in price between russet 
and bright fruit before the holidays is 
very great, oftentimes reaching 50 cents 
a box. There seems to be an opinion 
among a great many people that after the 
holidays there is very little difference be¬ 
tween the price of russet and bright fruit. 
While my data on this subject is not ex¬ 
haustive I have a great many instances 
where russet fruit did not sell for the 
same price as bright fruit—these differ¬ 
ences range from 10 cents to 70 cents per 
box. 
REMEDIES 
It has been known for thirty years that 
the sulphur sprays were very satisfactory 
to control this pest. White the sulphur 
sprays kill the mites and their eggs if used 
at sufficient strength it is not entirely 
known if this is sufficient to cause bright 
fruit. It is further known that the oil 
sprays will kill the rust mites and have 
produced fairly good results, but they 
don’t seem to be so satisfactory in pre¬ 
venting rust as the sulphur sprays. It 
would appear that these sulphur sprays 
unite chemically with the juices that have 
oozed out from the punctures of the mites 
and prevent their injurious action on the 
rind. ' . I 
The ordinary soda sulphur solution has 
been used in this State for many years by 
some of the most progressive growers, 
but I have found that the reason most 
growers do not get better results from 
spraying and the reason that it seems 
necessary to use it so frequently is 
because it has not been used strong 
enough. Most growers, I find, use it at 1 
to 60 or 1 to 66 and some even weaker. 
