Calag Archive

Nonwrapped jumble packed pears in cartons did not suffer more damage—when pads were compressed over the fruit by a tightly fastened lid—than wrapped fruit, in standard wooden boxes, in a series of laboratory tests.

Unless the public accepts the taste of a food product—regardless of how carefully prepared, nutritious, packaged, priced and available—the food is a complete failure.

Top quality Yellow Newtown apples can not be expected in the Watsonville district until late October but harvest usually begins about the third week of September.

The flight of filbertworm moths during the early 1956 season was very small when compared to 1954 or to 1955 but after mid-July the moth catch—in five bait pans in an experimental walnut orchard near Gridley—began to mount. By season's end the severity of the infestation was second to that of 1954, when the infestation was the most severe encountered since investigations were started in 1944.

Raising trees in the forest from planted seed—direct seeding—depends upon several factors.

Fumigation of strawberry beds with methyl bromide can give better control—99% and higher—of the cyclamen mite than any other method, however, the treatment costs approximately $150.00 an acre. At the maximum, two applications are needed per year, and with perfected techniques a single fumigation probably will suffice. However, fumigation must be carried out carefully to obtain maximum control and must be done precisely to avoid damage to the plants because the dosage that will give good control is rather close to that which will give plant injury and the proper dosage varies with the temperature surrounding the plants. At any one dosage better control is obtained at higher temperatures, but at the same time there is an increase in the amount of injury.

Canning tomatoes suffering from zinc deficiency were observed during the 1956 growing season near Linden, San Joaquin County, and in southern Sacramento County in addition to the known zinc deficient areas near Clarksburg in Yolo County. Apparently the disorder has a wider geographical distribution than was supposed.

Excellent control of annual weeds in flower seed plantings was achieved in Santa Barbara County test plots treated with Vapam, pre-emergence dinitro, methyl bromide, and Shell 20, during December 1954 and January 1955.

Part of a galvanized steel storage building in the Imperial Valley was painted during the summer of 1955—to study the influence of white paint on the thermal environment within a steel building and under metal animal shades—as part of a research project concerning the modification of the environment to improve animal gains.