64 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
and it is kept stirred up while it is being 
sprayed on the trees. It carries the sul¬ 
phur for a long time. The paste makes 
it adhere to the foliage, and you can 
smell the sulphur after a rain on a warm 
day, long after you would think it had 
all washed off. 
I have also used the lime and sulphur, 
the regular formula, but it is very disa¬ 
greeable to handle. Then I have used 
the caustic soda, making up a stock solu¬ 
tion of thirty pounds of sulphur and 
twenty of soda and using two quarts of 
this stock to fifty gallons of water. 
However, the spray mixture I men¬ 
tioned first is, in my opinion, just as good 
as any of the others, and much simpler 
to use. 
I start to spray when the orange is 
very small; just about as big as the end 
of your finger, and I spray about three 
times during the season, I judge the 
time of spraying by the condition of rust 
on the orange. If the rust mite is in¬ 
creasing, I spray. Then I give a rea¬ 
sonable time to see what effect the spray¬ 
ing has had, and if I think the rust mite 
has not been checked enough, I spray 
again. 
Mr. Mead: I am convinced that the 
treatment of the roots can have no ef¬ 
fect whatever on the starting of the tree. 
Anyone who has noticed will find that 
the buds start earlier on the north side 
of an orange tree; the twigs and buds 
having been subjected to greater cold re¬ 
spond more quickly to the ' oncoming 
warmth of spring, but the ground and 
" roots and cultivation have nothing to do 
with it, being alike for all sides of the 
tree. 
Snow has been piled around fruit 
trees in the north, keeping the ground 
frozen for a month after the rest of the 
orchard had warmed up, but these trees 
blossomed with the rest; branches resting 
on or partly covered with snow, bloomed 
at both ends, while the cooled buds re¬ 
mained dormant. 
I do not think that fertilizer or any 
other treatment of the ground that does 
not actually warm up the branches will 
have any effect on the time of starting in 
the spring. 
Mr. Porcher: I have had quite con¬ 
siderable experience in spraying. I have 
put forth the most strenuous efforts in 
combating the rust mite. I have used all 
kinds of different sprays. I have used 
sulphur solution. I have used the dust ap¬ 
plication and have found that the appli¬ 
cation of the dust made absolutely no 
difference; the mites would crawl up¬ 
wards dragging themselves by their four 
legs and dragging their tails behind them, 
so that they would leave a mark through 
the particles of sulphur. I have been 
seeking to do everything I could to ex¬ 
terminate the rust mite by natural ene¬ 
mies. I have seen some parts of the grove 
that seemed to be free from the rust mite 
without the aid of spraying, /and a few 
feet away would be trees infested with 
the pest. 
I have used humus in large quantities; 
over 1200 double horse loads were hauled 
this past season. I find that when you 
apply lime, as I do every three years, the 
rust mite is in excess. Where the ground 
is cultivated cleanly, it is absolutely im¬ 
possible to control the rust mite with any 
spraying. Where we use the humus we 
find less of the rust mite. The only dif- 
