Twenty Days to Spray: Yakima's Orchard Inspectors Take On the San Jose Scale
Yakima County's fruit inspectors are the busiest in Washington, ordering every infested orchard sprayed on twenty days' notice — while eastern growers scoff that the scale panic is just a racket for would-be inspectors.
The fruit inspector of Yakima county, Mr. Beck, and his assistant, J. D. Medill, are proving the most active of any in the state. All infested orchards are required to be sprayed on twenty days' notice.
W. H. Brown, fruit inspector for King county, condemned fourteen boxes of apples found in a West street commission house and that were affected with San Jose scale. The apples were from Oregon.
We have referred to the hysterical attitude of the eastern agricultural press over the appearance of the San Jose scale several times. We are pleased to note that they are now recovering from their excitement. Here is a correspondent who goes to the other extreme, and in the Indiana Farmer attempts to show that the scale is not of any importance. Of course he is wrong, for the scale will ruin an orchard where it is not eradicated by spraying.
"Inquiries go far in showing that at least some of the San Jose scale alarmists keep putting themselves in print with the view of securing a fat job as inspector or commissioner, and the question is now frequently asked, 'Will these fellows scare away other foreign markets besides Germany?' Our information shows that where the San Jose scale has longest been it is on the decrease, and in some sections that were infested ten years ago the scale has nearly if not quite disappeared. Many attribute this disappearance to natural death, some to its parasite, some to spraying."
Prof. Slingerland, of Ithaca, N. Y., says: "I believe that those fruit growers who now successfully combat the canker worm, pear psylla and curculio will be equally as successful in dealing with this pest."
“All infested orchards are required to be sprayed on twenty days' notice.”
Before the irrigation ditches and the railroads made Yakima synonymous with apples, the county's economy hung on keeping the orchards clean, and a county inspector with a spraying order was the front line. Washington still runs invasive-species quarantines on fruit — Japanese beetle, spotted lanternfly, apple maggot — and the same argument resurfaces every time: is the alarm science, or somebody's job?
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