Gardening in Californi 



The Red Spider seldom attacks plants in a good healthy con- 

 dition, unless they suffer from drought. Hence any measures 

 which encourage vigorous growth, such as plenty of water at the 

 roots, frequent hosing overhead, mulching the ground around the 

 plants with manure and freely cultivating the soil, diminish the 

 effects of the attack to a great extent. 



When a plant is attacked by Red Spiders, equal parts of sul- 

 phur and coal-soot should be mixed and dusted freely over the 

 entire plant, or one pound of sulphur-dust with two pounds of 

 soot should be put into six gallons of water and syringed over the 

 plant attacked. If this pest gets into a green-house, the hot water 

 pipe should be painted with a paste made of sulphur and quick- 

 lime in equal parts. If the green-house is heated, the leaves should 

 be dusted with sulphur and soot as recommended for out of door 

 plants, while the atmosphere of the green-house should be kept 

 in a moist condition, and, if these suggestions are followed and 

 careful attention is given to the watering of the roots, the Red 

 Spider will not make much headway. 



Caterpillars are of various kinds, some species attacking only 

 Oaks, while others confine their operations to the leaves of the 

 Rose, and still others are found only on the Hawthorn or Cab- 

 bage, etc. Those which live in webs, such as the common Oak 

 tree caterpillar, can easily be cut off and destroyed by waiting 

 until evening when they invariably return home after feeding 

 on the Oak leaves all day. The branch on which they have woven 

 their webby home should be cut off, and the caterpillars can then 

 be crushed or piled up and set fire to. In the case of those whose 

 nests are too high to be reached by hand, the branch can be cut 

 with long-handled shears and the caterpillars can be destroyed 

 as just suggested, or, if preferred, an oiled rag can be tied to a 

 long pole and lit, and the web of the nest of caterpillars touched 

 with the lighted rag, their home thus being destroyed and the 

 whole colony killed. No attempt should be made to destroy them 



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