Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Smut Disease of Onions
Commercial onion growing in Massachusetts sixty years ago was confined to the eastern part of the state, centering especially in Essex county about the Danvers section. But continuous cropping brought diminishing yields year by year until the growers found that they could no longer produce a profitable return on onions even in that fertile section. New land must be found, and the industry shifted gradually to the west until now practically all of the Massachusetts domestic supply of surplus onions is produced in the Connecticut Valley. The fertile acres of the Danvers section, famous onion center since colonial days, are no longer planted to omons.
When we inquire into the reasons for the diminishing crops and the westward shifting of the industry we find that the most important contributing factor was the increase in the prevalence and destructiveness of smut until the toll which it took wiped out the profits. A field once thoroughly infested with smut was permanently eliminated from profitable onion growing, and since no method of checking the disease had been discovered at that time the inevitable result was the migration of the industry from a section so largely planted to onions.
The Connecticut Valley region, however, did not long escape. Year by year, smut became more prevalent; fields were being planted to other crops and the his tory of Danvers was in a fair way to be repeated along the Connecticut, when the formaldehyde method of controlling smut was discovered and the industry saved for the Valley.
But the formaldehyde method as worked out by the pathologists of twenty years ago was far from satisfactory. The formulas of application which they recom mended were cumbersome and the machinery inadequate. The writers were unable to find a single grower in the Connecticut Valley who was applying the formaldehyde according to the rates of dilution and distribution which were recommended by the pathologists. Finding these inconvenient, the practical growers modified them in various ways to suit themselves. The results obtained were more various than the rates of application. Some were successful; many had partial control; others ruined the crop. Lack of uniformly successful results caused many to condemn the method and either to plant the fields to less profitable crops or to omit the formaldehyde and tend the onion crop at a reduced profit or an actual loss.
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