11.—GARDEN INSECTS.
In presenting this subject to our readers, it will be difficult to decide where to begin, or where to leave off. With the first warmth, aphides, or plant lice, in shoals and nations, show their unwelcome presence on our roses, geraniums, and almost all choice plants. Many of our choice fruit trees are infested with these pests of the garden. They are exceedingly prolific. Réaumur has proved that one of these insects, in five generations, may become the progenitor of nearly six thousand millions of descendants. They fasten themselves in crowds on a plant, and suck the life from it. Some live in the ground and infest the roots of plants, such as verbenas and China asters. We have often, on seeing a plant drooping, saved it by taking up the plant, root and all, and washing it in strong soap suds; replant it, after carefully scalding the earth, and digging it in. The plant should be protected from the sun for a few days, until the roots start again.
The best remedy for these plant lice is to syringe them with a solution of whale-oil soap, or a mixture of soap suds and tobacco water, used warm. Still another remedy is a solution of half an ounce of strong carbonate of ammonia in a quart of water. Where it is possible, dip the infected branches into either of the above solutions, holding them carefully in the solution several minutes.
A drying east wind makes insects abound, and rain clears them away.
The rose-chafers, or rose-bugs appear about the second week in June, and remain thirty or forty days. They infest rose bushes and grape vines. They must be carefully picked or brushed off into a basin of hot water, or burned, as they increase thirty fold, and destroy both fruit and flower.
Caterpillars of many butterflies and moths are destructive in a garden, and, when the perfect insects can be caught, before they lay their eggs, one death will save much killing. Whenever one is found resting quietly on a branch, stem, or leaf, with the wings folded, it is most likely a female about to lay her eggs, and it had better be killed. If a butterfly or moth is found so placed, dead, she will have laid her eggs; be sure to find and destroy them. As the season advances, destroy every chrysalis you find.
Possibly some of our young readers have never seen a chrysalis, and may not know what it is. We will try and explain this to you. Every species of the butterfly, or moth, is first a grub or caterpillar, crawling upon, or in the earth. These caterpillars, when they have completed the feeding stage, retire to some place of concealment, under a leaf, beneath palings, or in interstices of walls, spin a tuft of silky fibre, and entangle the hooks of their hindmost feet in it. Then they form a loop, to sustain the fore part of the body in a horizontal or vertical position. Then they spin a band over the back; and most caterpillars form a cocoon, in the shape of the letter U, around the body. Then they cast off the caterpillar skin, and become a chrysalis. In summer the chrysalis state lasts from eleven to fifteen days. Later it lasts all winter (while in this state these insects remain dormant). At the proper time the chrysalis bursts open, and a butterfly issues from it. We have often found these cocoons, or chrysalides, and taken them to our rooms to watch the coming forth of the butterfly.
Rose slug (Lelandin Rosæ), a light green, translucent little fellow, varying from one sixteenth of an inch to nearly an inch in length. There are evidently two species or varieties, one of which confines its ravages to the lower side of the leaf, the other eats it entire. The first is by far the most destructive here. In a few days after the plants are attacked they appear as if they had been burned.
The only remedy we have found is a preventive one, which, in fact, ought to be used against all insect life. We have spoken of this (and will not repeat) in our rose chapter. The only remedy, whale-oil soap, is prepared by florists by dissolving one pound to eight gallons of water. They apply it ten days in succession, with a garden engine or syringe. This must be done very early in the morning, or late at night, as the slug shuns the light of day, and hides under the leaf. With very young, delicate roses, the solution is too powerful; hand work will be necessary to pick them off. English sparrows, a comparatively late importation, should be kindly treated by all, as they are the best exterminators of injurious insects. The ground, or blue aphis, and verbena mite, are among our most subtle and dangerous of pests. They work at the root, and often before we can see the plant fading, they have taken its life. The florist’s remedy is as soon as you see the least sign of drooping in your Asters or Verbenas, the plants most afflicted by them, water them copiously and persistently at the roots, with tobacco water, the color of strong tea, and apply it daily for one week. We often take up the plants and wash the roots, but it is a harsh remedy: it will kill or cure.