AN EFFECTUAL CURE FOR THE BLIGHT ON APPLE TREES AND CABBAGES.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 184, 17 July 1869, Page 6

AN EFFECTUAL CURE FOR THE BLIGHT ON APPLE TREES AND CABBAGES.

In our issue for the first week in June, 1869, appeared a letter from Mr. Martin Batey, of Bulla, detailing the results of his experience in the cure of his own apple trees. The present autumn having brought its usual crop of questions in reference to curing the American blight, we have endeavored to ascertain from those who adopted Mr. Batey’s recipe the amount of success that has attended its use. In our enquiries we have met with unexpected and valuable information. The remedy has proved as destructive of the cabbage aphis as of its relative, the pest of the apple trees. For the public benefit we quote Mr. Batey’s words:—“About fire or six years ago I discovered, in digging about an apple tree (which was covered with blight on the lower side of the boughs like hoar frost, and with great scabby lumps under it), that the stem of the tree underground, and the roots were as white as snow with the living insect. I had been pickling wheat with bluestone, and I thought if I put the pickle about the apple tree roots it would poison the insect, and I did so ; and getting rid of the blight is the result. If I have not pickle enough, when I have done sowing I make some. I put one pound of bluestone to an ale cask filled with water, say fifty or sixty gallons. I then clear away the soil about eighteen inches or two feet round about the trees, until I lay the bottom of the stem bare, but not so as to injure the roots. I then throw in two or three buckets of the bluestone water, until I fill the hole. I do nothing to the boughs, and if the blight does not dissappear in about four or five months, I repeat the dose. I give the trees a slight dressing when I see any signs of blight.” Our inquiries now enable us to state that the above is a perfect remedy; experience, however, leads to the belief that a larger root surface may be cleared with advantage, for by doing so a second application may often be saved. But the solution of bluestone is also a preventive of the cabbage blight. One has been in the habit of applying it from a water-pot to the ground on each side of the row before earthing up ; another waters the whole ground with the solution before he plants. Although there are many other remedies or preventives of both of these pests, none are so simple, inexpensive, and easily applied as this one. "We have pleasure therefore in giving it this extensive publicity. As “blue-stone,” which is sulphate of copper, is rank poison, and many will use it who are unacquainted with the danger of leaving it carelessly about, a warning is necessary. If the bucket, cask, and waterpot are afterwards to contain water to be drunk by animals, great care must be taken to cleanse them thoroughly. Need we add that poisons should not be accessible to children. —Melbourne Leader , June 5.