Mr. Ingersoll: Is there anything you can suggest to control the yellows in asters?
Mr. Moore: The yellows in asters has been a problem which has been very amusing there at the farm. A man sends in an aster to the entomological department, we examine it and can't find anything that belongs to our department, and we send it to the plant pathological department, and they send it back to us. Last year we made a point in every case of yellows in asters to send some one to investigate and find out what was going on to produce it. In some cases it seemed to be a fungous disease. One case I know turned out to be a fungous disease, the very next one was due to plant lice on the roots of the asters. In that case I don't think you get quite the distinct yellows of the asters, but rather the plants wilt and become weak and finally die. That can very easily be controlled with tobacco extract, pouring it upon the buds of the plants. We do not know definitely about the yellows. We think it is more or less of a physiological disease of the plant, not due to an insect. This last year we have not found any what we would call the true yellows. There is an insect that produces similar trouble on other plants, a plant bug, which is hard to secure because it flies away. That is the reason we have been sending out to see exactly what is going on in the field, and we didn't see any evidence of their work this year. Another thing, it seems to be a year in which the asters did fairly well, and there was very little yellows.
Mr. Ingersoll: You think that irregular watering might make any difference or very solid rooting?
Mr. Moore: It might do something of the sort. The most we heard of the yellows was the year before last, and we were held up at the time with other work and could not investigate properly. Any one here that has yellows in asters next year, we would be very glad to hear from him and send some one out to find the cause. It wouldn't surprise me that it was something in the treatment of the aster.
Mr. Cadoo: Do angleworms hurt house plants?
Mr. Moore: Not as a rule. They do eat a small amount of vegetation, but ordinarily in a house plant, if you have, say, a worm in a pot, I think it is rather beneficial than injurious, because it keeps the soil stirred up.
Mr. Rasmussen: What is the spray for the cabbage and onion maggot?
Mr. Moore: Unfortunately I am a very poor person to remember figures, and I carry this around with me. One spray is three ounces of lead arsenate, two and a half pounds of brown sugar to four gallons of water, but we found that probably a little better spray was to use the New Orleans molasses instead of the sugar and the formula is: One ounce of lead arsenate, one-half pint of New Orleans molasses and one gallon of water. The spray that was used for the onion maggot and was devised over in Wisconsin is: One-fifth ounce of sodium arsenite, one-half pint of New Orleans molasses and one gallon of water.
Mr. Rasmussen: The Wisconsin spray is what I used to spray my place several years, and I was wondering if it was the same.
Mr. Moore: It was peculiar that they started to work on the onion maggot in Wisconsin at the same time we started on the cabbage maggot here.