Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

But there is one enemy that inspires me with fear and unmingled disgust. It is the type of a certain phase of character in society most difficult to deal with, and which the mantle of charity is rarely broad enough to cover—the stupidly and stolidly malignant, who have just sense enough to do a great deal of mischief, and to keep it hidden until too late for remedy. Science has dignified the detestable thing with a sonorous name, as usual—the Lachnosterna Fusca, already referred to. It does not deserve even its name in the common vernacular—White Grub; for its white is of a dingy hue, and its head dark, like its deeds. Has it a redeeming trait? "Give the de'il his due," says the proverb. The best I can say of the white grub is that crows, and an odorous animal I forbear to name, are very fond of it, This fact, I think, is its sole virtue, its one entry on the credit side; but there is a long, dark score against it. Of its havoc on the lawn and farm I will not speak, since it is sufficient for our purposes to state that it is the strawberry's worst foe.

The best method of circumventing the "varmint" is to learn its ways; and therefore I shall outline its history, beginning at a period in its being when stupidity predominates over its evil-that is, when it is the May beetle or June bug, that blunders and bumps around in utter disregard of itself and every one else. In this stage it is like the awkward village loafer, quiet by day, but active and obtrusive in the early evening. It dislikes honest sunshine, but is attracted by artificial light, at which it precipitates itself with the same lack of sense and reason that marks the loafer's gravitation toward a lighted groggery. Moreover, in the beetle phase, it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often caused by these brainless creatures.

Because quiet by day, they are not out of mischief, as defoliated trees often prove. As midsummer approaches, they die off; but never until each female beetle has put into the ground about two hundred eggs, which never fail to hatch. The first year, the grubs are little, and, while they do all the harm they can, the small roots they destroy are not seriously missed by the plants. The second year, their ability keeps pace with their disposition, and they occasionally destroy strawberries by the acre. More often, certain patches of a field or garden are infested, and sometimes will be kept bare of plants in spite of all one can do. Too often, the presence of the grub is learned only after the mischief is complete. You may have petted a strawberry plant for a year, and after it has developed into noble proportions, and awakened the best expectations from its load of immature fruit, you will, perhaps, find it wilting some morning. You then learn, for the first time, that this insidious enemy has been at work for days, and that not a root is left. An inch or two beneath the dying plant, the grub lies gorged and quiet in the early morning; but if undisturbed it soon seeks the next-best plant it can find, and it is so voracious that it is hard to compute the number it can destroy throughout the long season in which it works.

Having made its full growth in the spring of the third year, this grub passes into the chrysalis state, and in May or June comes out a perfect insect or beetle. It is "one, two, three, and out."

While there are beetles every year, there is, in every locality, a special crop every third year; in other words, if we observe beetles in great numbers during the coming May and June, we may expect them again in like quantities three years after; and every second year from such super-abundance they will be very destructive in all those fields throughout the locality wherein the eggs were laid.

REMEDIES

When once our soil is full of them, scarcely any remedy is possible that year. Surface applications that would kill the grubs would also kill the plants. Where they are few and scattering, they can be dug out and killed. Sometimes boys are paid so much a pint. When seeing a wilting plant, it would scarcely be human nature not to dig out the pest and grind it under our heel. Prevention of the evil is usually our best hope. Mr. Downing writes to me: "I believe that if you would use refuse salt three or four years in succession, at the rate of five or six bushels to the acre, the grubs would not trouble you much. Salt will not kill the full-grown larvae, but those in a very young state." The reader will remember a statement in Mr. Hale's letter on commercial fertilizers confirmatory of this view.

Experiments in this direction should be carefully made, since, in one instance that I am aware of, a fruit grower remarked, "I do not know whether the salt killed the grubs, but I know it killed my plants." It is my purpose, however, to try this agent very thoroughly. There is danger of our being misled in our estimate of the value of remedies, from forgetfulness of the habits of the insect. We find our ground full of larvae one year, and apply some cure or preventive. The following spring, the larvae become beetles and fly away, and, even if they fill the same ground with eggs again, the grubs are too small to be noticed that year; and therefore we may claim that our remedy is effectual, when there may have been no effect from it whatever.

One of the best preventives is to keep the soil under cultivation, for this beetle rarely lays its eggs in loose soil, preferring old meadows and moist, loamy, sodded land; the larvae are equally fond of grass roots. This is one of the reasons why a year or two of cultivation must often precede the planting of strawberries. When this fruit is grown in matted beds, they afford as attractive a place for the deposit of eggs as grass land; and this is another fact in favor of the narrow-row system and thorough cultivation.

Mr. Caywood, a nurseryman, says that he has prevented the approach of the grub by mixing a teaspoonful of sulphur in the soil just beneath a plant, when setting it out. Mr. Peter B. Mead recommends the pomace of the castor bean spread on the surface around the plants. I have never tried these preventives. One thing certainly might be done; exterminating war might be waged on the beetles. In the morning they are sluggish and easily caught; and in the evening we can treat them as whiskey venders do the loafers—burn them up. "Every female beetle killed heads off 200 grubs." If one could discover a complete remedy for this pest, he would deserve a statue in bronze. Mr. Fuller had a domesticated crow that would eat a hundred of these grubs daily. "When domesticated," he adds, "the crow forgets the tricks of his wild nature, and, not being a timid bird, he is not frightened by hoe or spade, but when the earth is turned over, is generally there to see and do his duty."