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Garden
Pests
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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 little foes little in
size, but tremendous in the havoc they make.
As human illness may often be prevented by healthful conditions,
so pests may 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 common 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 one meal. The
toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us.
Each gardener should 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 prefer live food. How can one "fix up" for toads?
Well, one 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 two 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 may be caught
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 one 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 one 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 easy to accomplish. I had cutworms
one season 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 large one. Should you see sometime a
grayish striped caterpillar, you may know it is a cutworm. But
because of its habit of resting 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 season 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 should 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 may be red, yellow or brown. Lice are
easy enough to find since they are always clinging to their host.
As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food,
and one is pretty sure to find 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 just 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 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, 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. 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.
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