BLIGHT ON FRUIT TREES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1319, 10 March 1877, Page 18

BLIGHT ON FRUIT TREES.

One quarter peck or more of fresh quicklime, 1 pint of sulphur, and l|lbs soft soap. Choose lime that weighs very lightly, dip a few lumps in, or sprinkle with hot water, and place in a bucket or vessel; sprinkle a little of the sulphur thinly over it, then add more lime just damp enough to slake and more sulphur on the top it, repeating this till all the sulphur is used. When the lime is slaked it will be seen that the sulphur ia quite dissolved, and is scarcely visible except in the darker colour it has given to the lime. The quantity of lime used is not important, so long as there is sufficient to dissolve the sulphur. The soft soap should then be dissolved separately, and afterwards mixed with the lime and sulphur, and sufficient water added to make three gallons in all. If the mixture is not thick enough to apply with a bruah, clay or more lime may be added ; if the glaring white ia objected to, mix with soot. Mixed in that way, and applied in hot weather, no amount of rain will wash it off ; but if lime is used that has been some time exposed to the air, the sulphur will not properly dissolve, and the first shower will wash it away.

Roses, as soon as the flowers have opened and bloomed one day, should have the decaying flower cut away; cutting back to a good strong bud, from which will come a new stem and flowers. Attention to this practice of cutting will keep plants blooming almost continuously. Never grow the same crops, nor crops of the same family, twice on the same spot without an intervening crop of a different nature. Never transplant shrubs and trees in a growing state. However carefully it may be done, the check is dangerous, if not fatal. Never allow the surface of the soil, in a pot or in the ground, to be long without stirring, unless it be naturally very open, as ia the case with peat earth. Let the draining of the ground be your first care. It is impossible to succeed to any extent with vegetables or flowers wkere the water is stagnant in the soil. Gather fruit in dry weather and with the sun shining, and place them as carefully in the basket as if they weie glass. The smallest bruise commences a decay. Unless you want seed, remove the flower stems as soon as the bloom decays. The swelling of the seed pods checks the growth and blossom of moat plants.