In a small way it isn’t necessary to have a high power, high pressure engine to do this spraying with.  A good hand pump, as they make them now, has a very efficient force in applying this spray.  It is not the force with which the spray material is applied that makes it effective, so much as it is the thoroughness with which it is done.  You have to do a thorough job.  In spraying you are providing insurance for your apple crop.  That is just what it means, and not to spray is like doing without fire insurance on your buildings.  You do that, not because you want fire, but you are doing it for protection, you are going to be on the safe side.  You are doing like the darkey woman when she was about to be married.  She had been working as cook, and the day came for her to be married.  That morning she brought a roll of bills down to the boss.  She said:  “Mr. Johnson, I wish you would keep this money for me.  I’s gwine to be married.”  He said:  “Is that so?  But why do you come to me with this?  I should think having a husband you would have him take care of it for you.”  She said:  “Lord a’ massy.  Do you think I was gwine to have that money around the house wid dat strange nigger there?  No, sir.”  (Laughter.)

That lady was taking the precaution of being on the safe side, and that is what we do when we spray our orchards, we are going to be safe.

There are a great many kinds of spraying materials.  There is the bordeaux, one of our best fungicides, but we find in Illinois that it also, while it is a good fungicide, has the effect sometimes of burning the fruit if the weather conditions are just right.  If you have pretty fair weather conditions up here and don’t have too much rain, you probably would not get your fruit affected too much, and if you are not growing it for market it doesn’t matter so much because all it does is to russet the fruit.  It doesn’t do any particular harm except when the scab fungus is especially bad, for then it does injure the foliage more or less.  On the whole, in Illinois, we are using the lime-sulphur in preference to the bordeaux, and our commercial orchard growers there have completely abandoned the bordeaux except for bitter rot fungus or blotch fungus, which comes late in the season.  The spray just before the bloom is a very important one for the scab fungus.  After you can see the pink of the bloom on the trees as they begin to look pink, before the blossoms open, put on your lime-sulphur, or you can use bordeaux mixture at that time if you prefer it, without injury to your fruit.

(To be continued in April No.)

Everbearing Strawberries.

GEO. J. KELLOGG, JANESVILLE, WIS.