110 TRUCK-FARMING AT THE SOUTH. 



REMEDIES. FOR CUT-WORMS. 



Many remedies have been recommended to kill or drive 

 away cut-worms, such as ashes, salt, lime, gas-lime, cop- 

 peras, sulphur, etc.; but I know of none, harmless to 

 plants, worth the trouble of application. Some have 

 been deceived by the disappearance of the worm at the 

 time it is about to undergo its changes, ascribing it to the 

 effect of a remedy. Dilute washes of soap, tobacco, etc., 

 do not seem to be repulsive to cut-worms. Pyrethrum, 

 the mere touch of which is so deadly to some insects, 

 seems in the open air perfectly innocuous to these, and 

 they soon recover, even after being covered with it for 

 half an hour or more in close confinement. 



Covering the stems of plants above and below the sur- 

 face of the ground by a funnel-shaped fold of paper or 

 tin, or surrounding a cucumber or melon hill similarly with 

 a hoop of wood or iron, may be a protection, but is a pro- 

 cess too troublesome and expensive for the truck-farmer. 



Eound holes made in loamy or heavy soil by the inser- 

 tion of a stick are said to entrap these worms, which may 

 be killed the next morning by re-inserting the stick. This 

 is one of the few remedies, the utility of which I cannot 

 deny from actual experience, never having cultivated 

 land heavy enough to prevent the worm from promptly 

 burrowing himself out of the trap. On a large field the 

 small holes, to entrap them, would necessarily be very 

 numerous, and the labor of re-inserting the stick into 

 each, whether empty or full, would condemn the remedy. 



The instinct of the parent moth will lead it to place 

 its eggs only where the future worm will find its proper 

 food; and if a field upon which the gardener expects to 

 put out valuable plants in the spring is kept bare of veg- 

 etation during the months in which the eggs are laid, 

 it will be free from cut-worms. If plowed up later, and 

 then kept bare during the winter, the worms will migrate 



