Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/154

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THE OLIVE

should be cut away till the sound wood is reached and this should be well spread with grafting wax.


INSECTICIDES.

If the orchard is sprayed once a year it will be sufficient, and the best time is in the winter after all danger from frost has passed. Whale oil soap is an excellent remedy but it has not the efficiency of kerosene. It will kill the coccids but has no effect upon their eggs. Kerosene pure and simple would be a dangerous and entirely unnecessary remedy to use, but diluted ten times with water it becomes much less expensive and by far the most efficacious.

The United States Department of Agriculture has published the following recipe to make thirty gallons of wash.

EMULSION.

Kerosene, 2 gallons 67 per cent.
Whale oil soap, ½ pound 33 per cent.
Water, 1 gallon

Boil the soap in the water till entirely dissolved then add it to the two gallons of kerosene, and churn the mixture thoroughly for five or ten minutes. The emulsion if perfect forms a cream which thickens on cooling, and should adhere without oiliness to the surface of glass. Any danger in the use of kerosene lies in the faulty or half-made emulsion. The soap may be of insufficient strength through exposure or some similar cause, when an increase will oblige the oil and water to emulsify, and will also make the emulsion nearly permanent.

The percentage of kerosene should not exceed eighty per cent., as the oil weighs six and a half pounds to the gallon, while water weighs eight, and more cannot easily be held in suspension in water. On the other hand in the process of emulsification, kerosene loses a portion of its value as an insecticide, and emulsions containing less than thirty per cent. of oil, although they may not separate