INSECT AND OTHER PESTS
Vigorously growing plants are far less liable than are feeble ones to the attacks of the various living enemies which the gardener is called upon to combat. Therefore the most important item in the suppression of insect or fungoid pests is careful and correct culture. But, even in the best kept gardens, green-fly and earwig, slugs, snails and wireworms will appear, and must be dealt with by repressive as well as by preventive measures.
The green-fly, which is sometimes such a trouble to our roses and fruits, should be treated with vigorous and repeated syringing or hosing with water. If this is found to be inadequate, the affected plants may be washed with tobacco water (made by pouring half a gallon of boiling water on an ounce each of soft soap and shag tobacco, and allowing the strained infusion to cool), or with an emulsion made by stirring well together half a pint of petroleum oil, two ounces of hard soap, and a quart of nearly boiling water, afterwards adding half a gallon of cold water, and thoroughly mixing. This last application should always be applied in the evening.
Wireworms, which are such a foe of the carnation grower, may usually be destroyed by spreading gas-lime at the rate of two pounds per square yard over the unoccupied soil in the fall, ploughing or digging it into the ground a month or two later. If this is impracticable, the wireworms may often be trapped by burying pieces of potato at intervals, removing them every few days.
For destroying the fungus of mildew nothing is more effective than sulphur mixed with soft soap and water in the proportion of one ounce of sulphur and four ounces of soap to four gallons of hot water.
Earwigs, which so often spoil the Dahlia blooms, may be trapped by crumpling a newspaper and placing it among the plants, or by filling a flower-pot with moss and inverting it over a stake—in either case examining the traps daily and destroying the victims.
Snails and slugs should be caught at night and killed by placing them in a bucket and covering them with salt. They may be trapped by placing cabbage or lettuce leaves at intervals about the garden, examining beneath them each morning; or they may sometimes be destroyed by watering the plants which they frequent with lime-water (made by adding a gallon of water to a quarter pound of freshly burnt lime, and straining).
Birds are sometimes harmful, but on the whole they do more good than harm in a garden, and I am inclined to agree with an old gardener, who, having caught a blackbird among the gooseberries, was asked by his master what he had done with it. "Oh," he replied, "I just gave 'im a warning and let 'im go."