Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-04-18
HERE ARE GARDEN
CIJTWORM CURES
Poison-Bran Bats Effective;
Arsenical Sprays For Ex-
treme Outbreaks

Washington, d. c., April 1S.-To-
matoes cabbages, sweet potatoes, let
tuce and other truck plants, especially
transplanted, are subject to serious
injury by cutworms. These pests ap-
pear sometimes in great numbers in
the spring and early summer, and fire.
quently do severe injury before their
ravages are noticed. Their method of
attack is to cut off the young plants
at about the surface of the ground,
and as these caterpillars are of large
size and voracious feeders, they are
capable of destroying many plants in
q single night-frequently more than
they can devour. Every year these
insects, working generally throughout
the United States, have destroyed
| hundreds of thousands of dollars
worth of crops. BY the timely appli-
cation of remedies however as has
been demonstrated by entomologists
of the United States Department of
Agriculture, they readily can be con-
| trolled, even over considerable areas.
The usual method of control is by the
use of poisoned bats.
How TO Mix
Take a bushel of dry bran, add one
pound of white arsenic or Paris green,
and mix 1t thoroughly into mash
with eight gallons of water in which
has been stirred half a gallon of sor-
ghum or other cheap molasses. CAR
Senic and Paris green are deadly poi
sons. Handle them with great care.)
This amount will be sufficient for the
treatment of about four or five acres
of cultivated crops. After the mash
has stood for several hours, scatter it,
| in Jumps about the size of a marble,
| a Hfhn Bn nitt.x
| beginning to appear and about the
bases of the plants set out. Apply
| late IN the day, so as TO place the
poison about the plants before night,
which is the time when the cutworms
are active. Apply a second time, if
and chickens away from this bait.
| CutwormS Travel Like Army Worms
| When cutworms occur in unusual
abundance, which happens locally,
and sometimes generally, they eX-
haust their food supply and migrate
to other fields. This they do literally
| in armies, assuming what is called
the army worm habit. At such times
| 1t is necessary to treat them the same
as army worms. While the methods
which have been advised are valuable
in such cases. they may be too slow to
| destroy all the cutworms, and other
methods must. be employed. These
! include trenching, ditching, the plow-
| ing of deep burrows in advance of the
] travelling cutworms to trap them, and
the dragging of logs or brush through
the burrows. If the trenches can be
! filled with water, the addition of a
| small quantity of kerosene, so as to
/ form a thin scum on the surface, will
| prove fatal to the cutworms. In eX-
! treme cases barriers of fence boards
are erected and the tops smeared with
| tar or other sticky substances to stop
the cutworms as they attempt to
crawl over.
Spraying With ArsenicaIs
In extremely severe attacks by cut
worms on choice plants there is some
| times no opportunity to prepare the
| poisoned bait. In such cases an ar
senate of lead spray will answer quite
as well. In one instance a parsley
field was sprayed with four pounds of
arsenate of lead to fifty gallons OF
water; this killed all the cutworms.
whereas If they had been left alone
for day or two longer the field prob
ably would have been destroyed. The
! result was a perfect stand-the best
ever made by the grower. In this case
| five applications were necessary.
Cultural Methods
Clean cultural methods and crop
rotation are advisable, as are also fall
| plowing and disking, to prevent re-
currences of cutworm attacks.
Many cutworms can be destroyed
where it is possible to overflow the
fields, particularly where irrigation is
practiced.