ORCHARD, FARM, AND GARDEN PESTS Every farmer or family living in suburban or rural locations should invest in a good, practical spraying outfit and have in readiness the nec essary ingredients for the different kinds of solutions used for spraying quickly and conveniently. Such an outfit will save its cost many times over in the course of w year on any farm, or even in a vegetable garden, flower garden, or ordinary lawn with shade trees and shrubbery. We quote from Dr. Wilhelm Miller, edi tor of the Garden Magazine, as fol lows: " The ideal way for you to insure yourself against all these troubles is to get a spraying outfit, costing about $7.50.
"I like best the compressed-air sprayers, because I am lazy,, and pmnping is hard work. With a doz en strokes of the plunger I can charge the machine in half a minute, and it will work automatically from six to fifteen minutes, according to the nozzle opening. It will spray three gallons with only two charg ings. This is enough to cover a quar ter of an acre of potatoes or straw berries.
" Seven dollars and a half may seem a lot of money, but a com pressed-air sprayer saves its value the first year in the larger and bet ter crops that you get. The outfits that cost less are generally more ex pensive of time or material, or both. Moreover, a good spraying outfit is invaluable if you keep chickens, be cause the best way to keep down lice is to spray the henhouse with kero sene. Also you can spray whitewash (an excellent vermin killer and dis infectant) in poultry houses and barns and on fences and walls much quicker than you can apply it with a brush. Also it is useful for water ing plants, washing carriages, and applying shading material to hotbed sash or greenhouse glass.
" However, no one should plead poverty as an excuse for not con trolling the San Jose scale on his premises, because anyone can spray a few bushes with the aid of a pail and an old whisk broom. Just get a quart of the prepared lime-sul phur-salt compound at any seed store for forty cents, and dilute it with fdrty quarts of water if you use it in November. From Decem
ber to February you can use it twice as strong with safety.
" Many people buy these dollar squirt guns, which hold about a quart, but they are so slow and tire one so quickly that it is better econ omy to buy something that works faster and sprays farther.
" A bucket pump costs about $3.75 without the bucket, and this is the cheapest outfit I would recommend. But if you have any small trees to spray, you will want a pole with an extra seven feet of hose, which costs a dollar more. Then you will find that the liquid slops over unless you get a bucket with a cover that fas tens down tight, and that may mean another dollar, or $5.75. By this time you will discover that it is very awkward to pump with one hand and hold up a seven-foot pole while spraying your fruit trees, and you will be willing to pay twenty-five cents more and get a compressed-air sprayer.
" Now, if you are willing to spend $6 for a sprayer, you might as well pay $7.50 and get the best there is, for that includes an anti-clogging device, like the auto-pop,' which will save you the most exasperating fea ture of spraying.
" Then you will have a, brass tank, which cannot be corroded by chemi cals or rusted like the tin and iron sprayers. It costs less than a knap sack sprayer, and you can carry it over your shoulder with the aid of a strap, for it weighs, when loaded, less than forty pounds. You can throw any kind of a spray, from a solid stream to a mist that will en velop a tree like a fog. And you have only one thing to think of—no pumping except once in ten or fif teen minutes." Recipes for Spraying.—The stand ard preparations or solutions for spraying are as follows: Bordeaux Mixture.—This consists of copper sulphate, quicklime, and water. The " Standard " formula is: copper sulphate, 6 pounds; quick lime, 4 pounds; water, 22 gallons.