Methods and Results of Winter Spraying 
WHAT PESTS TO LOOK OUT FOR AND WHAT SPRAYING MIXTURES TO APPLY—THE NEC¬ 
ESSARY MACHINES—THEIR CARE—COMMUNITY SPRAYING—FORMULAS FOR COMPOUNDS 
Grace Tabor 
T HERE are things other than the plants vve cultivate that are 
perennial in our gardens—the pests. And our warfare 
against them is about the one thing that is truly perpetual. 
Flowers come and go, the seasons bring their special labors, and 
winter finally brings rest—to everything save the man with the 
spray-pump. He must never rest; at least he must never rest 
with more than one eye closed at a time, although there is a brief 
interval during the blizzard sea¬ 
son, when a truce is sometimes 
declared. 
The reasons for this eternal 
vigilance lie in the varied habits 
of the enemy — an allied enemy 
composed of many races and 
tribes, each ravaging and pillag¬ 
ing according to its own peculiar 
ideas; each living and feeding 
and multiplying, hibernating and 
dying, according to some par¬ 
ticularly cunning scheme that in¬ 
sures its success in all these un¬ 
dertakings. 
A secondary reason is the de¬ 
pletion of bird life, unquestion¬ 
ably ; but that is a phase of the 
gardener’s troubles that must 
have consideration quite by it¬ 
self, and is not a part of the sub¬ 
ject we are here considering. In 
connection with insects, how¬ 
ever, and their appalling increase, 
thought should always be di¬ 
rected to the diminishing num ■ 
ber of birds and the fact that 
Nature’s balance is thus de¬ 
stroyed. Conserve the birds and 
preserve the crops — that is the 
wise gardener’s slogan. 
With the arrival of the first 
day of February hostilities are 
resumed. Some gardeners as¬ 
sume the aggressive sooner; no 
one should ever wait until later. 
In those gracious climes where 
vegetation starts earlier into growth than it does in the latitude 
of New York city, proportionately earlier activity is desirable; 
for the first spraying of the year must be done while the plants 
treated to it are dormant — unquestionably dormant, with not a 
suspicion of life abont them. The dose of lime-sulphur that they 
receive at this first treatment would be quite as disastrous to 
them as it is to their assailants, if they were not fast asleep and 
unconscious of it. 
The one insect which is the star of this performance is the 
San Jose scale — “the most dreaded of orchard pests”—and per¬ 
haps the most general nowadays. Time was when we knew him 
not in this land; but in the forty-five years since he made his 
first appearance in grounds at San Jose, California, he has 
thoroughly “naturalized,” until now there is not a corner of the 
land that is free from him, or a garden spot left unmolested. 
One real service has it rendered mankind, however; this is to 
center official attention upon insects, to give them the place in 
men’s minds and thought which their horrific depredations entitle 
them to, in commerce, in farming, and in all the branches of hus¬ 
bandry. From taking them and their destructive assaults as a 
matter of course, agriculturists have been forced to advance — 
or go under completely! — to 
an intelligent understanding of 
what they do, how they do it, and 
how to prevent them from doing- 
it. And as this advance has been 
gradually made, millions of dol¬ 
lars formerly lost have been 
saved annually. There are still 
more millions to be saved; but 
everyone is working in the right 
direction at last; and no one 
longer regards the insect pest as 
providential chastisement or dis¬ 
cipline—thanks very largely, in¬ 
deed, to just this one immigrant 
pest — which, by the way, should 
not be credited to Japan, as it is 
so often, but to China. 
The San Jose scale belongs to 
the same class of insects as the 
well-known and comparatively 
innocuous oyster-shell scale, or 
oyster-shell bark louse, frequent- 
on apples. But, instead of being 
elongated, as are practically all 
other species of scale known to 
us, it is almost, if not perfectly, 
round. Its color is so nearly that 
of the bark of twigs that it is 
not always easily discovered un¬ 
less present in great numbers ; 
and when it is full grown it is 
about an eighth of an inch in 
diameter. Its general appear¬ 
ance, when present in mass, is 
similar to a grayish deposit, 
roughened a little, suggesting a 
dusting of fine ash on the branches. Indeed, trees that are very 
badly infested might easily be mistaken for trees well coated with 
lime or ashes. 
Around the spot where each scale is affixed the bark is often 
dyed to a purplish tinge, and the bark beneath them is darkened 
perceptibly by their presence. The younger, smaller insects are 
darker in color than their seniors, sometimes so dark as to appear 
almost black; while those still younger than these — very tender 
infants, indeed — are yellowish. Both the full-grown and the half- 
grown will be found at this time of year; and it is against these 
that the spraying of early February is directed, the lime-sulphur 
solution destroying them, in spite of their armor, by its caustic 
action, which eats through it. 
It is perfectly possible to make this lime-sulphur solution, if one 
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