CUT WORMS.--Cauliflower plants being fully twice as valuable as
cabbage plants, and it being of more importance to have them started at
the proper time, it is necessary to give greater care to protect them
from cut worms. Absolutely clean land contains no cut worms, but such
land is seldom used on which to plant cauliflower. Sod land, which is
generally used, is nearly always full of cut worms. A multitude of
remedies have been proposed for this pest, but few of them are of much
value. The worms are most abundant and destructive in the latitude of
New York during the month of May. Fortunately, cauliflowers are usually
set out either earlier than this, for the early crop, so that they
become well established and out of reach before their depredations
seriously begin, or else, for the late crop, they are set toward the
last of June, after the worms have begun to pupate, and are no longer
troublesome. Until recently, digging and killing the worms by hand
seemed to be almost the only practical remedy. Of late years, trapping
the worms under bunches of grass or cabbage leaves, scattered over the
ground preparatory to setting the plants, has been successfully resorted
to. An improvement upon this method, recommended by the Entomologist of
the United States Department of Agriculture, is now in use, and gives
excellent satisfaction. It consists in poisoning with Paris green the
leaves used to trap the worms, so that there is no need to collect and
kill the worms by hand. A good way to do this is to spray with Paris
green, in the usual way, a patch of young clover, then cut it and
scatter it in small bunches over the cauliflower field a day or two
before setting the plants. For the protection of a few plants in the
garden, an effectual preventive against cut worms is to surround the
stem with a cylinder of paper or tin. This need not touch the plant. One
should expect to lose some plants, however, by cut worms, and be
prepared with good plants to fill the vacancies.
CABBAGE MAGGOT (_Anthomya brassicæ_, Bouché)--Dr. J. A.
Lintner, State Entomologist of New York, says of this insect: "This is
probably the most injurious species of the _Anthomyiidæ_, as its
distribution is very extensive, both in Europe and America, and it has
shown at times such capacity for multiplication as to cause the entire
destruction of cabbage crops. It commences its attack upon the young
plants while yet in the seed-bed and continues to infest them, in
several successive broods, until they are taken up in the autumn. The
larvæ operate by consuming the rootlets of young plants, and by
excoriating the surface and eating into the rind of older ones, or even
penetrating into the interior of the root. When they abound to the
extent of seriously burrowing the stalk the decay of the root frequently
follows in wet seasons, and entire fields are thus destroyed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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