1 Mar., 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 201 
PESTS AND DISEASES. 
eested in what 
It must not be supposed that after all has been done as sugg 
has been written on vegetable gardening for the farmers’ sons and daughters, 
there will be nothing to prevent all the crops growing luxuriantly right through 
the season. So far from that, you will have to contend with many kinds of 
ests and diseases. Caterpillars, slugs, fly, locusts, birds, worms, scale insects, 
ungoid diseases of various sorts, will all attack your garden in their turn, and 
they must be destroyed as soon as they appear, or there will be very little 
pocket-money. 
What is the best way of fighting them all? Ina small garden you can 
doa great deal by picking off the caterpillars, but the siugs (waginula par- 
ticularly) are night intruders, and these may be destroyed by the use of the 
powder of tobacco refuse. A dusting of this is fatal to them. Then there are 
sprays which will destroy both insect parasites and fungous diseases. Whale- 
oil soap, 1 lb. to 2 gallons of warm water, applied when cold is an excellent 
spray. Paris green and Bordeaux mixture will also help If taken in time 
most of the enemies of the vegetable garden can be Hesroved by proper 
appliances. Study the writings of scientific vegetable gardeners, and make use. 
oF the remedies suggested by them, and you will find that you will be success- 
ful with your garden, and still have plenty of time to do chores on the farm. 
NITRAGIN FOR BEANS. 
Mr. Henry Kent, late gardener at Ravensbourne Station, in the Tambo 
district, made a most interesting experiment in nitraginising a piece of new 
ground which it was intended to be used as a vegetable and fruit garden. 
When the land was broken up, Mr. Kent sowed a portion of it with beans, the 
long variety known as “‘ Chinaman’s beans.” He planted four rows each 100 
feet long, 2 feet apart from each other. In order to ascertain whether the 
new ground contained sufficient nitrogen for vegetable crops, he manured one row 
with well-rotted manure from the cow-pen. The other three rows were treated 
with nine buckets of soil from the old garden on which beans had been grown 
for along time. No nitrogenous nodules could be seen on the roots of the 
beans with the naked eye, and even under the microscope only a few could be 
noticed. When the crop was gathered, it was found that the first row which 
had not been treated with the bacterial soil produced 25 per cent. less in weight 
of beans, whilst the plants were four weeks later in flowering. An experimeut 
such as this is valuable, showing as it does that the successful application of 
nitragin to the soil is not such a myth as many would make it out to be. 
GROWING TOMATOES. 
Most growers of tomatoes for sale or export aim at producing very large, 
smooth fruit. That the smooth variety is preferred to the wrinkled kind is 
evident fom the fact that the public, as a rule, do not care for the latter, and 
that a better price can be obtained for the former. But abnormally large 
tomatoes are a mistake. As a general rule, the public prefer a moderate size. 
The housewite does not like getting two or three fruits to the lb., because 
there is often much wasted in the large sizes. From 2 to 8 inches in diameter 
is quite large enough, and such tomatoes will always command a better price 
than the very large ones, which are more useful to the cook for “ fancy work ” 
than for general purposes. 
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