Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884.: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and FiresideVarious
Science
Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884.: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside
Various
Agriculture -- United States -- Periodicals; Farm life -- Periodicals; United States -- Rural conditions -- Periodicals
Eight years ago I came to the conclusion that I could raise double the
number of bushels of corn that I was then raising. I then commenced
experimenting on a small scale. I succeeded very well for the first
three or four years. I got so that I could raise over ninety bushels per
acre. In one year I got a few pounds over 100 bushels per acre. Three
years ago my crop began to fail, and has continued to fail up to the
present year, with the same treatment. Last year it was so bad that I
concluded to examine the roots of the corn plants. I found both
angle-worms and grubs in the roots. This year I went into a thorough
examination and found nothing there but angle-worms, with a wonderful
increase. They were right at the end of the stalk where the roots were
thick, but the worms thicker.
The corn at first seems to do very well, but long before the grain gets
ripe the leaves begin to get dry and the stalks commence falling. The
consequence is that over one-half the corn is loose on the cob and the
ears very short. I am entirely headed in the corn line. Is it the
angle-worms? If so, what is the remedy? I plant my corn every year on
the same ground. I allow no weeds to grow in my cornfield. Farmers can
not afford to raise weeds. I remove all weeds and put corn in their
places.
I have plowed my land for the next year's crop of corn and put on twenty
loads of manure to the acre and plowed it under. I have no faith in
planting the ground next year unless I can destroy the worms that I call
angle-worms. I have consulted several of my brother farmers, and they
say that the angle-worms never destroy a crop of corn.
I thought last year that my seed corn was poor and run out, so I went to
Chicago and got Sibley's "Pride of the North," but that was no better.
If you will kindly inform me how to remedy this looseness of the kernel
I will agree to show you how 100 bushels of corn can be raised on one
acre every good corn year.
HORACE HOPKINS.
DESPLAINES, ILL., Jan. 2.
* * * * *
We sent this communication to Professor Forbes, State Entomologist and
received the following reply:
EDITOR PRAIRIE FARMER--There can be hardly a shadow of a doubt that the
injury which your correspondent so graphically describes is due to the
corn root-worm (Diabrotica longicornis), a full account of which will be
found in my report for 1882, published last November.
The clue to his whole difficulty lies in the sentence, "I plant my corn
every year on the same ground." As the beetles from which the root-worms
descend lay their eggs in corn fields in autumn, and as these eggs do
not hatch until after corn planting in the following spring, a simple
change of crops for a single year, inevitably starves the entire
generation to death in the ground.
I inclose a slip, giving a brief account of this most grievous pest; but
the article in my last report already referred to will be found more
satisfactory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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