The Apple Scab

The apple scab is a parasitic fungus growing upon the leaf and fruit and flourishing in cool, inoist weather. It has been known to botanists f or a long time and throughout the eastern and central states one is almost certain to find it in e ver y orchard, and it is also frequent in California. The effect of the scab is to cause a large proportion of the fruit to drop while quite small, to greatly disfigure the size and market value of that which matares, and to injure the vitality of the tree by causing a premature falling of the foliage. Ünder ordinary circuinstances there are some varieties which escape the scab, but in some seasons, however, it respects neither condition of soil, mode of culture, nor variety of fruit. So also varieties notably free from disease in one section may scab badly in some other locality more or less remóte. It has been demonstrated by experiments made by and under the direction of the Obio station, that the griowth of scab fungus may be checked by spraying the tree at proper times during the spring with several of the copper compounds commonly used as fungicides. So far as tested the most satisfactory compound is a dilute Bordeaux mixture containing four pounds of lime, four pounds of copper sulphate and fifty gallons of water. As directed by Mr. Green, the horticulturist of the station, the first application should be made bef ore or about the time the leaves open, the Bordeaux mixture being used alone. The second spraying should be made immediately af ter the blossoms fall. In this Paris green or London purple may be combined with the dilute Bordeaux mixture to destroy tb,e apple worm. The third application may be made a week or ten days from the time of the second and with the same materials. The fourth and last application for the season snould be made in about two weeks from the time of the third, and dilute Bordeaux mixture alone used. Por early ripening varieties the fourth application may be omitted, to avoid leaving a coating of the mixture on the fruit when ripe. It appears that spraying greatly increased the market value of all the varieties experimented upon, and in the case of Newtown pippin the value was more than doubled. The difEerence was also quite marked with Bellflower and Smith's eider, but less so with Baldwin and Greening. The effect of judicious spraying with fungicides is to check the dropping of immature f ruit in the spring, to cause it to grow to larger size and more free from blemishes, to cause it to hang better to the tree while ripening and take on higher color and to improve its keeping quality.