General Notes.
—While grasshoppers cannot be considered as a common pest in the vineyard, still they are at times greatly destructive. There has been during the last sixteen years two such invasions of grasshoppers in the California raisin districts. The grasshoppers are of many species, some seventeen kinds having been recognized one season. They all breed in the waste or unplowed ground outside the vineyard, and when full-grown invade the vines. This fact can be taken advantage of to destroy them.
Remedies.
—The waste lands for a half mile at least all around the vineyard should be plowed and harrowed in the early spring. This will destroy the eggs of the grasshoppers, and the fallow land will serve as a barrier over which the grasshoppers do not readily pass.
If the vineyards are so situated that the weeds or natural vegetation on the land surrounding the vines can be burned for half a mile or more, this will also prove a certain barrier for the hoppers.
A mixture of fifteen pounds of white arsenic with eighty pounds of bran and twenty pounds of middlings, moistened with enough water to make a paste, will be eaten by the grasshoppers. The paste is spread on bits of shakes or shingles and distributed all around the vineyard, and later on in the vineyard. It may also be smeared on fences or trees. The grasshoppers will eat it readily, and can thus be successfully destroyed. If this method is used in time, the advancing army of the pest can be kept back or destroyed at the very entrance of the vineyard. As another remedy, a spray is recommended consisting of one ounce of Paris green, one hundred gallons of water, and two pounds of paste. This is sprayed on the trees or vines, and is said to kill the grasshoppers effectively without injuring the fruit.