The garden yard

Now suppose you have prepared your soil properly, and planted your seed carefully; that your transplanting has been done, and your crops are growing; do you think your work is done, and you have only to wait for sun and rain to do the rest? If that is your idea, you are not cut out for a farmer. Get out of the business as soon as you can. There are no “soft snaps” in farming or gardening, on either a large or a small scale. But the man in love with his job, no matter what it is, is not looking for soft snaps, nor does he find his work hard. There is a reward in tilling the soil and in watching “the green things growing,” as Riley has it, that is not excelled by the rewards of any other calling.

It is absolutely necessary that you should watch your growing crops, for only in that way can you keep in touch with their needs. The parent who neglects to watch his children and to look out for their physical needs, generally has doctors’ bills and anxiety. A little watchfulness would have revealed the first stages of decay in the teeth; the early signs of adenoid growths; the symptoms of eye-strain, or the irritable state of the digestive organs, and the trouble could have been stayed. To be sure, the ounce of prevention costs something, but not nearly so much as the pound of cure. It is a question of business foresight, as well as parental affection, to watch the child, and the crop, and forestall disease.

Crops need careful watching, and to forestall most diseases there is nothing better than spraying. Once upon a time the man who sprayed his crops was a rarity, and his neighbors were not sure that he had not taken leave of his senses, but now the man who does not use the spray, is the notable exception—a monument of foolishness.

If you take the pains to find out what your soil will grow, you will know what insects and diseases are likely to attack your crops, and you can plan your campaign against them with intelligence.

Begin at the beginning, which is in the winter. First find out what spraying mixtures are best for dealing with the pests you are to meet. This can be done by writing the Department of Agriculture or by the study of books. Then study agricultural papers and Department bulletins as to the best spraying machines or nozzles on the market, and buy what you need.

Where any doubt about the quality of seed exists, it is often a wise precaution to spray it before planting, but you must spray your growing crop on the very first sign of insects or diseases. Remember that bugs do not like poison, and will not go where it is; therefore, you must take it to them in good quantities. Partial spraying is little better than none. Do the job thoroughly, when you start in to do it at all. See that the whole plant from root to top is thoroughly saturated—stem, branches and leaves. One spot untouched by the spray makes a sure refuge for the bug. Don’t sympathize with his homeless condition at the expense of your crop.

Bordeaux mixture is a cure for almost every variety of plant disease. It consists of sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) and lime, diluted with water. The principal use of the lime is to make the mixture stick to the plant and to render the copper sulphate less caustic, and one thorough spraying, if rain does not come for a day or two, will cling to the plant for a couple of weeks. This mixture can be safely used even before there is any sign of disease, and it then acts as a preventive. But where disease is severe, apply it every few days, because the new leaves and shoots offer so many breeding places for the disease spores.

To make 12 gallons of Bordeaux, use one pound of copper sulphate and one pound stone lime. Be sure to use wooden vessels, as vitriol eats tin; an oil barrel, sawed in halves, makes good tubs for dissolving the vitriol and slaking the lime. Put one to one and a half gallons of water in the tub and hang the vitriol over night in a piece of burlap, which just touches the water. Slake the lime in the other tub by adding water as fast as the lime takes it up, and no faster. When both are properly dissolved, fill the spray barrel about one-eighth full of water and add the solution of vitriol. Add enough water to the lime barrel to make 2½ or 4 gallons and then strain the slaked lime into the spray barrel through a wire fly-screen or two thicknesses of potato burlap. Fill the barrel with water enough to make 12 gallons of mixture, and stir thoroughly for some minutes. If your spray has an “agitator” attachment, you need not trouble further, but if not, you must stir the mixture thoroughly every few minutes while spraying.

Bordeaux mixture should be made fresh for each spraying, but the vitriol and lime may be prepared ahead in large quantities, if they are not mixed, and are kept covered to prevent evaporation. Thus forty pounds of vitriol may be dissolved in 40 gallons of water, and forty pounds of lime slaked in 40 gallons of water. Four gallons of each will make a basis for 50 gallons of Bordeaux mixture.

The only disadvantage to Bordeaux mixture is that it discolors the plant, it being a “blue whitewash”; and those who object to the discoloration often use the ammoniacal carbonate of copper, rather than the sulphate. But this is not so sure a remedy, neither does it stick so well. It is made by dissolving an ounce of carbonate of copper in a pint of water and adding it to a quart of ammonia. If the ammonia is strong, use only enough to thoroughly dissolve the copper, otherwise it will injure the plants. Cork the mixture tightly and when wanted for use, add from 8 to about 20 gallons of water to each ounce of the copper. This is used principally on fruit that is nearly grown, or upon purely ornamental plants, to avoid discoloration.

Bordeaux cannot cure internal diseases of the plants. These may be caused by insect borers at the roots, or by some incurable bacterial trouble, and in this case there is nothing you can do but root up the affected plants and destroy them, and then study out how you can prevent its happening again.

Sprays for insects usually consist of some form of arsenic or of kerosene emulsion, and occasionally whale-oil soap is used. The most common form of arsenical poison is Paris green, of which about 2000 tons are used annually in this country; this is mixed in the proportion of one-half pound of Paris green to 100 to 150 gallons of water and one-half pound of fresh burnt lime.

However, where the insects are very bad, as potato bugs often are, the same amounts of Paris green and lime may be mixed with only 50 gallons of water. Paris green is too caustic to apply stronger than that, except in very rare, specified cases. The Paris green should be mixed with a little water till it is smooth, before it is added to the larger quantity of water. Sometimes it can be sprinkled on, but the only sure results are secured by using a spray, either hand or power.

Sometimes Paris green is added to the Bordeaux mixture, and the crops sprayed for insects and diseases at the same time. When this is done, you regard the Bordeaux as water, and add the Paris green in the same proportion as you would add it to water. In this case you need not add the lime, because the lime in the mixture is sufficient. London purple is sometimes used in place of Paris green for the same purposes, and in exactly the same proportion and ways, but it is not so easy to know how strong it is as with Paris green, and it is being used less and less each year.

Another preparation is arsenite of soda, which is made of white arsenic, two pounds; carbonate of soda (washing soda) eight pounds; water two gallons. These must be boiled in an iron kettle, which should not be used for any other purpose, for about fifteen minutes, or until the arsenic dissolves. Some water will evaporate during boiling, so, before bottling, add enough to make the full two gallons. This will keep a long time if tightly corked. To make a spraying solution add one-half pint to 25 gallons of water. The quantity given is, therefore, enough to make 8 barrels of 50 gallons each. Unless mixed with Bordeaux, add two pounds of slaked stone lime to each barrel. Be sure to mark your bottle of solution plainly, “POISON.”

Arsenate of lead clings to foliage better than any other arsenical poison, and since it does not burn foliage it can be used alone, in the proportion of from one to five pounds to 50 gallons of water. It was first used in 1892 against the gypsy-moth and is annually growing in favor.

All insects which feed on the outside of plants are divided into two classes—the chewing or biting insects like beetles and larvae (worms), and the sucking insects, which include the various scales, plant lice, and squash bug. The chewing and biting kinds are killed with the Paris green solution, but the sucking sort need kerosene and preparations which kill by contact.

There are many ways of making the standard kerosene and soap emulsion, but Bailey recommends the following method as the best:—Put one-half pound of hard soap into a gallon of boiling soft water; as soon as the soap is dissolved, add two gallons of kerosene or coal-oil. This mixture should be of a milk-like consistency, which can only be secured by running it through a pump vigorously for fifteen minutes or more. For use on plants or trees, it is diluted with ten to fifteen times its bulk of water. It can be used stronger than that on trees in the winter. It is sure death to scales and plant lice if applied early enough; this is another proof of the value of watching your growing crops.

Within a few years, pumps have been invented which will perfectly blend water and kerosene without the addition of soap, and this is by far the better remedy. Without soap, the proportion of kerosene can be increased to even one-fourth the quantity of water, without injury to the plants, if the application is made while the sun is shining. This emulsion is fatal even to the dreaded San José scale. As experiments are constantly going on along this line, the up-to-date farmer or gardener will keep in touch with the latest discoveries.

Whale-oil soap, one pound of soap to four or five gallons of water, used to be a popular remedy, but it is rapidly giving place to kerosene emulsions, which are more easily prepared and less offensive. Tobacco dust will drive away cucumber and melon beetles, if liberally applied, and will lessen the ravages of the flea-beetle. But Bordeaux mixture well applied will do the same.

For treating cabbages or other crops late in the season, white hellebore is often substituted for Paris green, which is a deadly poison. It may be applied dry, alone or mixed with half as much flour; or in solution, one ounce to three gallons of water.

Spraying enormously increases the yield of any crop, and indeed sometimes makes all the difference between good crops and no crops. So long as insects and diseases exist, any patch in any part of the country is liable to attack. Because you have escaped so far is not to say that you always will escape, so be ready for emergencies. Timeliness and thoroughness are two essentials, and these can only be secured by combining watching with spraying. It pays. Six years of potato spraying at Geneva, N. Y., increased the yield 122 bushels to the acre when sprayed five times during the season. Where only three sprayings were given, the increase was 93.6 bushels per acre.

You may be discouraged by these infinite details of care and management: but if you have not the time or the inclination to attend to them, that is not a reason for neglecting the study of Intensive Farming.

It is a reason for not undertaking a greater variety of crops than you can master; a succession of well-chosen plants will fill all the time you choose to give. I am showing how the best results can be obtained, but the most ordinary farmer will find his returns vastly increased by applying as much of these methods as he can manage.

For instance, at the South, the uneducated negro finds that his cotton crop is often increased, from half a bale per acre to two bales on each acre, by merely putting in a clover crop before the cotton.

Apply what you can learn, as far as you can: the power to learn more and to use it will come by use.