The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming Part 27

"A beetle, the striped beetle, attacks young melons and squash leaves.

It eats the leaf by riddling out holes in it. This beetle, as its name implies, is striped. The back is black with yellow stripes running lengthwise. White h.e.l.lebore powder kills these pests. Ask the druggist for five cents' worth and you will have a great plenty for any of your gardens. It, too, is a poison. This poison is also good to use for the caterpillars that eat many of our garden plants. Make a circle four inches from the stalk of an infested plant and sprinkle the powder in this. Evening time is good for this, because the dew moistens the powder just enough to make it a nuisance to the insect.

"Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps. Do you see the good of cleaning up rubbish? The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will disturb them, and up they'll poke to see what the matter is.

"Beside these most common of pests already mentioned, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants.

Discouraging, is it not? Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages, as George well knows. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants. In the flower garden lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles the vegetable garden takes the prize. If we were going into fruit to any extent, perhaps the vegetable garden would have to resign in favour of the fruit garden.

"A common pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a large yellowish or greenish striped worm. Its work is to eat into the young fruit.

"A great, light green caterpillar is found on celery. This caterpillar may be told by the black bands, one on each ring or segment of its body.

"The squash bug may be told by its brown body, which is long and slender, and by the disagreeable odour from it when killed. The potato bug is another fellow to look out for. It is a beetle with yellow and black stripes down its crusty back. The little green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most common of garden pests by name. It might be well to take up the common vegetables and flowers mentioning the pests which prey on each one.

"Let us take the vegetables first. None of us have grown asparagus yet; but it will be well to know about this vegetable. There is a beetle which may trouble asparagus plants. It is red with markings of black.

The grub of this beetle is dark green. Look out for the asparagus beetle during April and May, for these are the months when it appears. The eggs are laid on young shoots of the plant. Such shoots should be cut right off. After the cutting season is over the plants should be sprayed.

This may be done in August. Very dilute Bordeaux mixture or Paris green may be used for a spray.

"Next in the alphabet come beans. The most common trouble that beans have is one called anthracnose. That staggering word means that the leaves become covered with spots which are round with purple borders.

Again, a spray of Bordeaux mixture should be used. The plants should be sprayed until the pods form. Look for this trouble in July.

"Beets are p.r.o.ne to leaf spots. As soon as such spots appear, the plants should be sprayed with the Bordeaux mixture. Every two weeks give the plants about three sprayings.

"The cabbage worm I have spoken of. This worm works all summer.

Cabbages, if neglected, become literally alive with the little caterpillars. They eat and eat the foliage, riddling it completely. They eat into the heads so that the cabbage plant is completely spoiled.

George treated his with pyrethrum powder. This he mixed with five times its bulk of dust. It was then dusted or shaken over the cabbage plant. A very good thing to do before trouble begins is to dust the soil and tender plants with lime. After the plants have begun to head use h.e.l.lebore powder.

"Lice appear on cauliflower. The kerosene emulsion which we use on our indoor plants is all right for this work, too. The lice appear on the foliage in great white ma.s.ses. They suck the life and goodness from the plant. They come all through the summer at any time. Whale oil soap is another good spray to use. Peter has typewritten receipts for these sprays which you may have at the close of this talk. Sometimes the root of the cauliflower is attacked. Little white maggots mine or burrow through the root. They are quite likely to begin their bad work in June or July. That rather dangerous carbon bisulphid is the medicine for this trouble. Make a hole in the soil as you did when treating the ant. Do not make this too near the plant. I should say six inches away would be about right. Pour a teaspoonful of the poison into the hole and it will take care of itself. Cover the hole over as you would in the case of the ant. When cauliflower plants begin to look sickly pull one up. If it is full of maggots that is easy to determine. But it may be that you will find great lumps or knots on the root. Since these knots appear during the same months as the maggots, you can only be sure of the real cause by pulling up a plant. If these knots are on the root, then you have a very serious trouble to contend with. So serious is the club root condition that the only safe thing to do is to pull up and completely destroy the diseased plants. Dig the soil up after this. Then lime it.

Put a lot of lime on, not just a dusting over the surface of the soil.

This represents soil that is in trouble, so do not plant cauliflower here again, or its coa.r.s.er cousin, the cabbage.

"Sometimes a little red or orange and black bug appears. This is called the harlequin bug from its fantastic appearance. This bug may come all summer long at any time. The whale oil soap spray is the one to use.

Celery may be troubled with the light green caterpillar with the black bands before spoken of. This caterpillar arrives in August. It is not difficult at all to see, so many may be picked off just by hand. One may use Paris green as a spray.

"None of you had any trouble with corn being infested. But sometimes a worm, called the earworm, which is like the tomato worm, will appear during June and eat the tips of the young ears. A little Paris green sprinkled on the leaves, at their base will kill them.

"Cuc.u.mbers and melons, as I have before said, are p.r.o.ne to be preys of the cutworms, squash bugs, striped beetles, and lice or aphis. You know treatment for cutworms and lice. The squash bug may be destroyed by hand. Sometimes when bits of sticks are placed on the ground the bugs will crawl under them. Next morning a small harvest of bugs can be killed. The squash bug lays its eggs on the under surface of the plant's leaves. These leaves should be removed and burned. The striped beetle is kept off by the Bordeaux mixture spray. This beetle appears in June. A spraying during this month often prevents a blight of the leaves in July. This blight appears first as a spotting on the leaves, after which the leaves soon wither up.

"Onions, as well as radishes, are affected by maggots which will mine through the onion bulb as well as the stems of the young, tender plants.

A solution made from carbolic soap and water is excellent with which to water the soil about the plants.

"Peas have green lice as melons and cuc.u.mbers do. The lice appear early in May and June, and are killed and kept down by the regulation treatment. Many times during the latter part of summer peas may become mildewed. You can tell this by a growth of white down on stem and leaves. Put some soap in the Bordeaux mixture and spray.

"From May to October potato bugs flourish. Paris green is the spray to use. In the start they may be hand picked. But do not let them get ahead of your hand. A very serious potato disease is that of scab. Scales appear on the potatoes themselves. To prevent this, uncut seed potatoes are soaked in poison. But this is not a work for you to do alone by any means.

"The squash bug naturally seeks out the squash vine. He should be treated as we said when we talked of the same bug and melons.

"Tomatoes have numerous troubles. The cutworm, the tomato worm, the horn worm, potato beetle and various blights may come to tomatoes. The horn worm is a large green worm named from the horn at one end of its body.

It appears in midsummer. Such large worms usually may be hand picked. If you should see a tomato plant wilting for no reason at all, pull it up and burn it; it probably has an infectious trouble which is carried from one plant to another by insects. It is really an infectious disease.

"These are the most common vegetable garden pests and their remedies.

"As the girls know, the flower garden is not without pests, too. Plant lice are plenty enough. These may appear at one time or another during the entire year.

"Some plants become covered with a little red spider. It attacks the foliage and does great damage. This may be due to lack of moisture with house plants. I do not mean lack of watering, but a dry condition of the air of the room. Often just a spray of clear water is sufficient to rid the plant of the mites.

"Roses have more troubles than any one other flower. The rose bush may have lice or it may have a little green bug that jumps very quickly and so gets its name of leaf-hopper. Kerosene emulsion is good to use. Often slugs will feed upon the surface of the leaves. A dusting of lime over the leaves keeps these feeders away. There is a brown beetle called the rose chafer, which eats the flower itself. Hand picking is about the best weapon to employ against this enemy. A scale sometimes comes on the stems. This scale looks like a white crust. It is wise to spray such rose bushes with kerosene emulsion. And better still, if possible, cut off and burn such scale-encrusted parts.

"Cutworms bother the early bulbs and the violets, too. A great many of the larger pests may be hand picked. The lice should be sprayed.

"And for the remedies. The following will be the ones you will need the most:

KEROSENE EMULSION

Soap (Ivory) 1/4 pound

Boiling water 2 quarts

Kerosene 4 quarts

"The soap should be shaved up and dissolved in the water. To this add the kerosene (of course not when the soap and water is on the stove) a little at a time. Beat it with an egg beater to be kept for that purpose; or shake it vigorously.

"For use against plant lice add to one cup of this emulsion 8 cups of water. For scale insects dilute with four cups of water.

BORDEAUX MIXTURE

I. Copper sulphate (blue vitriol) 1 lb.

Water 1 gal.

Dissolve the sulphate in the water.

II. Slaked lime 1 lb.

Water 1 gal.

Dissolve the lime in the water.

To one bucket (2-1/2 gallons) of fresh water add four pints of the first solution. To another bucket of fresh water add six pints of the second solution.

Stir these together. Keep the rest of the solutions I. and II. for later mixing when it is needed.

WHALE OIL SOAP HOT WATER SOLUTION

Whale oil soap 1 pound Hot water 6 quarts

This is the right dilution for plant lice but for scale insects it is too weak; for them use about two quarts of water to one pound of soap.

"The best way to apply liquid sprays in small gardens is to use a whisk broom. Just dip the little broom into the mixture needed and shake the brush over the plant. Then the hands need never come in contact with the poison. Careful children can use sprays without any trouble. Josephine has used kerosene emulsion in this fas.h.i.+on: she pours a little into a saucer, takes a bit of cheese cloth and dipping it into the emulsion wipes the lice off an infested part. Usually one application is enough.

This sounds like a much more disagreeable task than it really is. A plant syringe may be used. But personally I like the hand method. Of course if there are lots of lice on many plants this would not be practical at all.

"It stands to reason that sick plants need medicines of some kind.

Sometimes to be sure they need better living conditions. Often the soil is sour, water-logged, unaired and totally unfit for a self-respecting plant to live in. The whole thing resolves itself into a study of conditions, and a desire to help the plant have as comfortable a time as possible in life."