April 80, 1871. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICTJIiTDEE AND COTTAGE GABDENER. 



341 



BED SPIDEB. 



HAT a delightful proceeding fruit and 

 vegetable forcing would be if it were not 

 for the red spider ; but how often are our 

 hopes blighted by the untimely appear- 

 ance of these little insects. It is all very 

 •well to write about syringing them, and 

 applying sulphur, but I have never yet 

 met with unadulterated water that would 

 kill them unless it was applied hot, nor 

 with sulphur that would check them in 

 the least unless it was converted into sulphurous gas, and 

 even of this they will bear more with impunity than 

 tender plants will. I have long ago given up the useless 

 practice of painting hot-water pipes with sulphur, and yet 

 I see people year after year doing it in good faith, and 

 advising others to do it ; for no better reason, I suppose, 

 than that their fathers did it before them. But some 

 one may say, " I paint my pipes, and I have no difficulty 

 with red spider." Possibly, but it is not because you 

 paint the pipes with sulphur, but because your general 

 treatment is good. If you carefully place some of the 

 insects on the pipes which are coated with sulphur they 

 will probably find their way on to the plants again but little 

 the worse for their journey ; also, if you give them half 

 an hour's bath, without removing them from the leaf on 

 which they are quartered, in water that is neither below 

 35° nor above 180°, you wiU find them rather refreshed 

 than otherwise. 



Having said that neither water nor sulphur will kill 

 these insects I shall be expected to say what will do so. 

 I am extremely sorry to say I can do nothing of the sort. 

 There are lots of things sold for killing them, any of 

 which will do it if you can only get at them ; but in 

 practice you can only get at some of them, and the 

 utmost you can do when they once get a footing is merely 

 to keep them in check till the growing season is over. 

 In winter, when vegetation is dormant and insect life 

 comparatively so, it is an easy matter to get rid of them 

 altogether by an unsparing use of soft soap and hot 

 water. Once clear of them resolve to be more liberal 

 to your plants, stinting them of neither root-room nor 

 water. Bed spider does not first make its appearance 

 on vigorous-growing plants; it has a great dislike to 

 ammonia and to plants which have a plentiful supply 

 of that article. It comes first on those which are 

 half-starved — plants which naturally gi'ow vigorously, 

 but which are prevented doing so by a too-limited sup- 

 ply of BoQ and water, especially if kept in a hot dry 

 atmosphere. 



Strawberries and Dwarf Kidney Beans are the agents 

 by which, perhaps, the greater part of the red spider is 

 distributed in forcing houses in the spring ; but, providing 

 other plants are free from it, it is an easy matter to grow 

 both of these without it. Beans are generally forced in 

 pots 9 or 10 inches in diameter, two or three plants in 

 a pot, the pots being half or three-parts filled with soil 

 when the Beans are sown, and more soil added when 



No. 683.- Voi. XXVI., Niw Series. 



the plants have made some growth. Now, if the soil 

 is examined when the Beans are done with and thrown 

 out, it will be seen that the upper part of the soil has 

 not been made much use of. Bwarf Kidney Beans do 

 not emit roots from the stem, however high they may 

 be covered with earth, and therefore only the soil in 

 which they were sown has been of much use to thena — 

 probably averaging about a pint of soil to each plant — and 

 this has most likely been dry two or three times a-day, 

 and sometimes remained so for hours together. Here, 

 then, is a tempting bait for the red spider, and if there 

 is none in the house it will somehow put in an appear- 

 ance before long. The greater part of the soil should 

 be placed below the seed instead of above it, and it will be 

 found that more Beans of better quality will be obtained 

 from one plant in a pot than from three. I use and 

 prefer boxes about 3 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 1 foot 

 deep, sowing five or six Beans in a box. The soil does 

 not dry so fast in wood as it does in pots. Sir Joseph 

 Paxton is the variety used ; it comes quickly into bearing, 

 and is quickly over before red spider has any chance to 

 estabhsh itself. It is necessary, however, to look sharply 

 after successions with this variety, sowing a second lot 

 as soon as the first appears above ground. The boxes 

 are thoroughly scalded each time as soon as emptied. 



Strawberries generally get their stock of red spider in 

 the summer. They are layered in small pots, and get 

 dry more than once during a hot day in June and July, 

 and are, perhaps, supplied with water that is not nearly 

 so warm as the soil in which they are growing. They 

 also receive another severe check when severed from the 

 parent plant, which they do not get over for several 

 days. Bed spider is not at all backward in taking pos- 

 session at such times, and by the autumn there is gene- 

 rally sufiicient on the plants to breed a healthy stock 

 from in the spring. 



I have tried several modes of preparing Strawberry 

 plants for forcing, and that which I have settled down 

 to, and which I practised exclusively last summer, is to 

 layer them into the fniiting pots (G or 7-inch), and leave 

 them attached to the parent plants till the connecting 

 runners show signs of decay. They then receive no 

 check at all, and the consequence is that I have not a 

 single red spider on my Strawberries ; and although the 

 autumn here was very unfavourable — it rained almost 

 constantly throughout August and part of September — my 

 plants are as good as I ever had them, and the fruit is 

 pronounced better. 



In preparing the pots for layering, which can be done 

 by labourers on wet days in May or the beginning of 

 June, some strong clayey loam mixed with a httle of 

 the strongest manure that can be obtained is used to 

 threo-parts fill them, ramming it in as hard as is possible 

 without breaking the pots ; the remaining space to within 

 half an inch of the rim is filled with soil that is a little 

 lighter, and without manure. The pots can then be 

 stacked away one above another till they are wanted. 

 The soil, of course, should be sufficiently dry that it wUI 

 not bind together. I calculate I gain quite three weeks 



Ke. 1336.— Vol, LL, Old Siues. 



