240 



Gardening for Amateurs 



Grubs and Caterpillars should be 

 sought for unceasingly; any delay means 

 much irreparable harm to the Rose bushes. 

 The eye can soon be trained so that it notices 

 immediately any malformation or bunching 

 together of the leaves. Sometimes the leaves 

 are stuck together face to face, sometimes 

 rolled, in other cases it looks as though there 

 were merely an excessive number of leaves 

 in one spot, but immediately any such 

 apparent malformations are observed take 

 the whole bunch of leaves firmly between 

 finger and thumb, and give it a very firm 

 squeeze, afterwards unroll or open out the 

 leaves to see that capital punishment has 

 been duly executed upon the hidden 

 marauder. In the first instance be very 

 careful not to shake the branch or the bush 

 at all before getting firmly hold of the nest 

 of leaves, or the grub or caterpillar will 

 almost certainly at once slip out and drop 

 down, hanging by a thread, and it is then 

 often difficult to find. 



After the grub has been killed in the nest 

 or elsewhere, unroll the leaves which formed 

 its hiding-place, some of them may be 

 saved, but if most or all are much damaged 

 nip the whole bunch off at once, otherwise 

 you will find that every time you go round 

 looking for grubs and caterpillars you will be 

 squeezing and re-squeezing the same bunch, 

 for safety. Probably you will have a strong 

 suspicion that you have dealt with this 

 particular bunch before, but do not like to 

 risk leaving it in case you should not have 

 searched it. 



Greenfly and Mildew. Usually early in 

 May we first discover the greenfly or aphis. 

 Various methods of poisoning, suffocating, 

 and in other ways destroying this pest are 

 given in the chapter dealing with Insects and 

 Diseases, so I will content myself here by 

 mentioning the fact that the simplest and 

 best remedy is to squeeze the insects between 

 finger and thumb. I may mention that it 

 is advisable to carry with one a bowl or 

 basin of water for the purpose of cleansing 

 the fingers whilst engaged in this not alto- 

 gether pleasant but necessary pursuit. 



If the aphis be only on a few prominent 

 shoots and you dislike the squeezing process, 

 take a bowl or dish of soft soap and quassia 

 or some other of the numerous insecticides. 



go round the bushes and carefully bend down 

 each infected shoot until it is immersed in 

 the soapy fluid. This work needs care in its 

 performance, as the young shoots are often 

 brittle, especially in wet weather, and are 

 easily broken, a most annoying occurrence. 

 Spraying for this purpose is not nearly so 

 certain in effect, and in any case a good deal 

 of the substance used must necessarily be 

 wasted, and almost as certainly does more 

 or less harm if the bushes are in bloom. 



Mildew often does not put in an appear- 

 ance until later in the year, and is generally 

 at its worst in late summer and autumn, 

 but it is well to try to prevent its advent by 

 spraying with sulphide of potassium, Abol, 

 Mo-Effic, commercial formaldehyde, or some 

 other preparation, proprietary or not, accord- 

 ing to fancy, every week or ten days from 

 the commencement of June, or earlier, acting 

 on the principle that " prevention is better 

 than cure." Be extremely careful never to 

 use an overstrong mixture. Err, if err you 

 must, on the side of excessive weakness 

 rather than strength, as the penalty of using 

 overstrong washes is a severe one and gener- 

 ally means the destruction of all existing 

 foliage, in which case the cure is worse than 

 the disease. The likelihood of this result 

 is particularly great in the case of home- 

 made washes in which paraffin is a principal 

 ingredient. 



Disbudding. It is wise to rub off all 

 superfluous or badly placed shoots while 

 they are quite small, so that the plants may 

 not waste their strength in producing growth 

 that will have to be cut out later on. At 

 first the small buds can be picked off with 

 the finger-nail, but a bladed instrument 

 with a blunt point, such as a silver fruit- 

 knife, an ivory or bone paper-knife, or, a 

 sharpened piece of hard wood, will do almost 

 equally well. Take off without delay all 

 ingrowing buds or shoots, and where there 

 are a number of buds gathered at one point 

 some must be sacrificed. A mass of small 

 and feeble growths is of no use for flowering 

 purposes, and constitutes harbourage for 

 insect pests in addition to exhausting the 

 plant's vitality to no purpose. 



The aim should be to allow only such 

 shoots to grow as are well placed, that will 

 develop in an upward and outward direc- 



