How To Control Garden Pests

As the days become warmer and spring rains are prevalent, discoloring fungus plants (commonly called mildew), rust and numbers of bugs and insects may attack garden plants. Inspection of the garden several times a month for these pests will warn you in time to stamp out real damage.

The two types of mildews attack suddenly. Powdery mildews usually appear as thin, flour-like patches of white on the surface of plants and do their damage by means of tiny sucking organs which either km or stunt the plans. They attack -about 1500 species of flowers, fruits, stems and leaves, chief among them apple, peach, grape, gooseberry, currant, cherry, grains, roses, vines of all kinds including bean, cucumber and squash. So many vines are subject to mildews that many gardeners are recognizing the value of espaliered shrubs to take their places.

Powdery mildews usually can be checked if the plants are dusted with dry sulphur or controlled with all-purpose dusts and sprays that contain rotenone, pyrethrum and copper. Fumes of boiling sulphur are also helpful. However, use no sulphur in any forra on cucumbers, melons, and squash.

Mildews that develop within the plant and thus cannot be detected as easily as the powdery type are called downy mildews. These fungus growths appear on the surface when they begin to shed their summer spores and are like soft, whitish, hairy outgrowths. Plants most frequently attacked are grape, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, onion, and alfalfa.

All-purpose sprays and dusts, Bordeaux mixtures, and other fungicides are used for downy mildews. Bordeaux is also fine for rusts. Plants badly affected with rust should be removed and burned.

The two classes of insects and bugs that damage garden plants are juice suckers and plant eaters. All-purpose sprays and dusts are used for sucking pests. Insecticides containing poisons such as arsenate of lead, rotenone, and pyrethrum, with or without copper compounds, are used on leaves of plants to combat chewing insects.

Special attention should be given undersides of leaves. Never forget that food plants sprayed or dusted with poisons should be well washed before use. Consult your nurserymaa about any of the products for pest control about which you have any doubt.

Arsenate of lead and molasses mixed with wheat bran and placed under heavy boards so children and dogs cannot eat the mixture usually trap nightworking cutworms and slugs, or prepared pellets may be used. Nematodes usually can be checked with dichloroethyl ether and copper, or specially prepared products on the market. Virus-infected plants, particularly tomatoes, should first be dusted with an all-purpose preparation, then removed and burned. Use prepared products or summer oil emulsion for mealy bugs and aphis.

If worms eat underground root vegetables, sprinkle naphthalene (mothball flakes) in two-inch trenches near roots. Cover with soil. Mothballs hung in sacks near vegetables will help keep back chickens and dogs.

Pluck off foraging insects by hand and destroy them daily. And do not forget to encourage the presence of nature's allies, the toads, frogs and birds. A single toad has been observed snapping up more than 100 green flies in one-half hour.

Toads and frogs can be encouraged in a professional capacity with daytime hiding places of rock piles in shady places, with small cement pipes under shrubs, or with small boxes placed on their sides in cool, dark corners.

Bird baths, drinking stations, suet, and other bird foods, protection from cats, boxes of nesting material, etc. will attract feathered assistants in the garden industry. Some birds will scratch out and eat flower and vegetable seeds, but this can be prevented largely by covering newly planted ground with wire screen.