Mr. Sauter: How long must they stand dissolved?
Mr. Dunlap: The lime-sulphur is in solution, and if you have that in your water tank the best way is to put your arsenate of lead in in the form of a paste and dilute it until you get it so that there is about two pounds of arsenate of lead to a gallon of water, and with that you can pour it into your tank and if you have an agitator in there you won't have any difficulty with it. In the early days of spraying when we used blue vitriol with lime, we tried a concentrated solution of the blue vitriol and lime and found we couldn't get it through the strainer, but by diluting it, putting our blue vitriol in one tank, and putting half of our water that we intended putting in the sprayer in that, and taking another tank and putting half the water and the lime in that and then putting the two together in this diluted solution, we didn't have any trouble, but in putting in the concentrated solutions together we had a sticky mess and all sorts of trouble. It would not go through the strainer.
Mr. Sauter: How does the powdered arsenate compare with the paste?
Mr. Dunlap: I haven't had any personal experience with the powder and I would have to refer you to the experiment station.
Mr. Sauter: Powder mixes a great deal easier.
Mr. Dunlap: Yes, sir. I had this experience with hydrated lime. The hydrated lime, as you know, comes in sacks and in the form of flour, and all you have to do is just to pour that into the water, and there is no trouble about mixing it at all. With lime from barrels that we used for making bordeaux, we would slake it and run it off into barrels, and there we diluted it so that we got two pounds to every gallon of water, our stock solution. But with the hydrated lime we can take so much out, so much by weight, and put it into the tank, and it dissolves right in the water. But we found this difficulty as between slaked lime and the hydrated lime. While the hydrated is very nice to use it did not possess the adhesive quality that the regular slaked lime did, and it would wash off the trees and take the vitriol solution with it, and we discontinued its use.
Mr. Sauter: You think it best for anybody with a small orchard to make his own lime-sulphur solution?
Mr. Dunlap: That depends on how he is equipped. It costs a great deal less to make your own solution than it does to buy it. Whether you could afford to do it or not depends upon the amount you spray and your equipment. You really ought to have, in making your own lime-sulphur, a steam boiler, although you can make it in an ordinary farm feed boiler. You can boil it right in that and turn it out after it is made, stirring it with a wooden paddle while cooking. I find that if we are equipped for it we will make a product that is equal to the imported product, but we ought to have a little more equipment. We ought to have steam and run this steam into our cooking vat to keep it boiling at the right temperature right along, and boil it for an hour, and then have a mechanical agitator in the bottom of the tub that keeps it stirred up, and keep the cover closed down as nearly tight as possible so as to exclude the air as much as possible, letting the surplus steam escape, and in that way we get a product as good as anything we are able to buy, at less than half the price. If one is using a great quantity that is the way to do it, but in small quantities I don't think it would pay to bother with it. (Applause.)