FARM PRACTICES TO LESSEN INJURIES 



Early or late planting of certain crops may result in these 

 escaping injury; for example, from the cotton boll worm, Hessian 

 fly and others. The early cutting of clover leaves the second 

 crop less subject to injury from the Clover-seed chalcid. 



Heavy fertilization or intensive cultivation, or both, may so 

 force a crop as to enable it to outgrow insect injury. 



Resistant Plants. The grower may also buy resistant stock 

 fruit trees on roots resistant to borers or he may plant strong 



~] stemmed wheat which will not 

 ! readily break as the result of 

 Hessian fly injury. Occasion- 

 ally a choice in varieties will 

 help, as in the case of the 

 strawberry weevil, which 

 attacks only staminate varie- 

 ties of berries. 



Protection of all birds 

 known to be useful, and 

 judicious treatment of those 

 thought to be injurious should 

 be the program of a wide- 

 awake farmer, and one should 

 be cautious in condemning any 

 bird, since an injurious trait 

 may be a temporary one, due 

 to unusual conditions, and may 

 be more than balanced by a 

 bird's good qualities exercised 

 at another season. One should, 

 in particular, hold the right 

 attitude toward hawks and 

 owls a group formerly re- 

 garded with unjust suspicion. With the exception of Coopers 

 Hawk, and at times other large hawks regarded as "hen hawks/' 

 and the sharp-shinned hawk which feeds largely on small birds, 

 all of the hawks and owls are more or less useful, some of them 

 decidedly so, since they feed upon insects, field mice, gophers, 

 rabbits and ground squirrels (see Chapter XX). 



It is believed that the large increase in field mice in parts of 

 the Middle West may be accounted for very largely by the war of 

 destruction waged against hawks and owls, and animals such as 



FIG. 7. Portion of an orchard showing 

 trees well covered with a dormant spray. 

 (Dean, in Kansas Bull.) 



