338 VEGETABLE FORCING 



mon striped cucumber beetle. The adults deposit their 

 eggs on the stems near or below the surface of the 

 ground, where they hatch, and the tiny, transparent 

 larvae feed on the young roots and also bore into the 

 stems of the plants. The young insects do much greater 

 injury than the beetles. Serious attacks of this pest 

 sometimes cause growers to believe that the plants are 

 infected with bacterial wilt. Preventive measures are 

 important in order to guard against losses from this pest. 

 Cucumbers and melons should not be grown near the 

 greenhouses, for the beetles usually enter the houses 

 during the fall months and remain well protected in the 

 soil until the spring crop of cucumbers is started. It is a 

 difficult pest to destroy, and though numerous methods 

 might be suggested they are not very satisfactory. The 

 doors and ventilators should be kept closed, if possible, 

 in the fall, when there is danger of large numbers of the 

 insects entering the houses. 



The squash bug or "stink bug" sometimes feeds on 

 greenhouse cucumbers. The same preventive measures 

 should be taken as suggested in the previous paragraph 

 for the beetle. They inject a poisonous substance into 

 the plants and also inoculate them with the dreaded 

 disease, bacterial wilt. This well-known insect and its 

 conspicuous eggs are easily seen and they should be 

 removed and destroyed as soon as discovered. The 

 sciara maggot, thrips, flea-hoppers and a few other in- 

 sects of minor importance sometimes appear on green- 

 house cucumbers. 



Diseases and their control are discussed in Chapter 

 VIII, and soil sterilization in Chapter VI. The direc- 

 tions in these chapters for the prevention and treatment 

 of diseases affecting greenhouse vegetables apply to most 

 of the cucumber diseases, so that a lengthy discussion 

 here is unnecessary. All of the troubles to which the 

 cucumber is subject when grown in the open may appear 



