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 odor 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.
