Garden Pests
If we could garden without any interference from the pests which attack plants, then indeed gardening would be a simple matter. But all the time we must watch out for these tiny foes tiny in size, but fantastic in the havoc they make.
As human illness might often be prevented by healthful conditions, so pests might be kept away by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste are lodging places for the breeding of insects. I do not think a compost pile will do the harm, but unkempt, uncared-for spots seem to invite trouble.
There are certain helps to keeping pests down. The constant stirring up of the soil by earthworms is an aid in keeping the soil open to air and water. Many of our basic birds feed upon insects. The sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds who help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too. And toads are wonders in the number of insects they can consume at 1 meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us.
Each gardener ought try to make her or his garden into a place attractive to birds and toads. A good birdhouse, grain sprinkled about in early spring, a water-place, are invitations for birds to stay a while in your garden. If you wish toads, fix things up for them too. During a hot summer day a toad likes to rest in the shade. By night he is ready to go forth to eat but not to kill, since toads like live food. How can 1 "fix up" for toads? Well, 1 thing to do is to prepare a retreat, quiet, dark and damp. A few stones of some size underneath the shade of a shrub with perhaps a carpeting of damp leaves, would appear very fine to a toad.
There are 2 general classes of insects known by the way they do their work. One kind gnaws at the plant really taking pieces of it into its system. This kind of insect has a mouth fitted to do this work. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are of this sort. The other kind sucks the juices from a plant. This, in some ways, is the worst sort. Plant lice belong here, as do mosquitoes, which prey on us. All the scale insects fasten themselves on plants, and suck out the life of the plants.
Now can we fight these chaps? The gnawing fellows might be trapped with poison sprayed upon plants, which they take into their bodies with the plant. The Bordeaux mixture which is a poison sprayed upon plants for this purpose.
In the other case the only thing is to attack the insect direct. So certain insecticides, as they are called, are sprayed on the plant to fall upon the insect. They do a deadly work of attacking, in 1 way or another, the body of the insect.
Sometimes we are much troubled with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but 1 of which you must be careful.
This question is constantly being asked, ‘How can I tell what insect is doing the destructive work?’ Well, you can tell partly by the work done, and partly by seeing the insect itself. This latter thing is not always so simple to accomplish. I had cutworms 1 time of year and never saw one. I saw only the work done. If stalks of tender plants are cut clean off be pretty sure the cutworm is abroad. What does he look like? Well, that is a hard question because his family is a massive one. Should you see sometime a grayish striped caterpillar, you might know it is a cutworm. But because of its habit of relaxing in the ground during the day and working by night, it is difficult to catch sight of one. The cutworm is around early in the time of year ready to cut the flower stalks of the hyacinths. When the peas come on a bit later, he is ready for them. A very good way to block him off is to put paper collars, or tin ones, about the plants. These collars ought be about an inch away from the plant.
Of course, plant lice are more common. Those we see are often green in colour. But they might be red, yellow or brown. Lice are simple enough to obtain since they are always clinging to their host. As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food, and 1 is pretty sure to obtain them. But the biting insects do their work, and then go hide. That makes them much more difficult to deal with.
Rose slugs do great damage to the rose bushes. They eat out the body of the leaves, so that merely the veining is left. They are soft-bodied, green above and yellow below.
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.
Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour nearly 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 nearly 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 merely water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite in all probability to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will interrupt them, and up they will poke to see what the matter is.
Beside these most basic of pests, pests which attack numerous 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. In fact, the vegetable garden has numerous 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 time of year 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 basic pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a massive 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 might be told by the black bands, 1 on all ring or segment of its body.
The squash bug might 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 tiny green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most basic of garden pests by name.
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