INSECTS AND DISEASES 21 



PROTECTION 



Four factors are accountable for the winterkilling of perennials 

 and the main one is not the extreme cold. Drying winds are especially 

 detrimental to those which hold their foliage through the Winter. 

 Water standing upon the crown wiU kill most perennials. The alter- 

 nate freezing and thawing of the soil will cause much damage, because 

 it causes them to be lifted from the soil. Especially is this true of plants 

 set too late or of those plants having few fibrous roots. 



Except wlien diseases are rampant in the garden, the tops of the 

 plants should not be removed until Spring because they tend to pro- 

 tect the plants by catcliing the snow. Leaves are frequently used as 

 a protecting material but they are harmful and actually smother the 

 plants unless the border is first covered with rough material so that 

 they cannot pack tightly over the crowns of the plants. Evergreen 

 plants, Sweet Williams, Hollyhocks and such plants, are easily pro- 

 tected if evergreen boughs are used. Remember that plants need a 

 parasol as much as they do an overcoat. Manure serves as a good 

 protection. However, it should be well decayed or strawy, not lumpy 

 and compact. 



The protection is best applied after the ground is frozen. The 

 plants will then remain frozen. A mulch appUed too early will cause 

 the perennials to make a soft growth during the warm days of the Fall. 



It is well to loosen but not remove the nmlch on the warm days of 

 early Spring. Take off the mulch when the date of the last kilhng frost 

 is passed. 



INSECTS AND DISEASES 



PERNICIOUS, vicious, obnoxious and throughly bad are the pests 

 and diseases of our perennial garden. The control of insects and 

 diseases has been mentioned under the plants affected, but here 

 must be stated some general facts and a few standard formulae given 

 for insecticides and fungicides. 



INSECTS 



Two big groups of insects bother our flowers: Those which chew 

 holes in the leaves, flowers and stems — the caterpillars, "worms," 

 slugs, cut worms — for these stomach poisons are used; and those 

 which merely pierce through the tissues of plants and suck the juices 

 from them — aphids, Hce, leaf hoppers — for these contact insecticides 

 are used. ,^The,insect^must actually be hit, in which case it is smothered. 



