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Birds and Garden Fruits

Birds may be kept from eating fruit by providing them with an abundance of food they like better and can reach more easily. They will leave strawberries, raspberries and cherries and probably other  fruits to cram their crops with juneberries and Russian mulberries for which humans have little desire. 

Western New York fruit growers plant these two species of trees selecting several varieties of mulberries (not Russian) that ripen successionally. Don't  judge all mulberries by the Russians. Several kinds  bear fruits two to five times as large and are delicious to eat whether raw, alone or when mixed with other berries ripe at the same time or when canned or otherwise preserved. The best of the dessert varieties are  Downing, Hiclts, Merritt and New American. 

When planting the mulberry one caution is necessary: Always place the trees where pigs or poultry may reach the fallen fruit or where the mess it makes  when it falls will not be objectionable. Never place  a mulberry tree on a lawn! 

The dwarf varieties of juneberries (also known as shad-bush, service-berry, mes?ilus and amelanchier)  may be planted among other shrubbery that grows  about as tall as lilac, but the tree varieties should  have ample space as they often grow 40' tall. 

Juneberry fruit is always eaten so greedily by birds that unless it is exceptionally abundant it never  becomes a nuisance by falling in large quantities on  the ground. The chances are that the owners of trees  will get little fruit mainly because it is out of reach.  If the birds do not first get the fruit of the dwarf  varieties it may be gathered, mixed with currants or  raspberries and eaten as a dessert or canned. 

Strainers built on the plan illustrated are specially useful and convenient for removing sediment from  such liquids as home-made lime-sulphur wash, bordeaux mixture and liquid manure. When the crude  liquid is poured in at A and allowed to come to rest  part of the sediment collects at the bottom but the  lighter particles are still held in suspension. Some of  these might be large enough to clog the nozzle of a  spraying apparatus; but by making the liquid pass  upward through the removable screen at B that  drawn off at the faucet-will be free from such particles. When cleaning is necessary the box need only  be turned on its side with the faucet uppermost and a  stream of water forced into every corner by a hose and nozzle. 
 

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