338 VEGETABLE FORCING 
mon striped cucumber beetle. The adults deposit their 
eggs on the stems near or below the surface of the 
ground, where they hatch, and the tiny, transparent 
larve feed on the young roots and also bore into the 
stems of the plants. The young insects do much greater 
injury than the beetles. Serious attacks of this pest 
sometimes cause growers to believe that the plants are 
infected with bacterial wilt. Preventive measures are 
important in order to guard against losses from this pest. 
Cucumbers and melons should not be grown near the 
greenhouses, for the beetles usually enter the houses 
during the fall months and remain well protected in the 
soil until the spring crop of cucumbers is started. It isa 
difficult pest to destroy, and though numerous methods 
might be suggested they are not very satisfactory. The 
doors and ventilators should be kept closed, if possible, 
in the fall, when there is danger of large numbers of the 
insects entering the houses. 
The squash bug or “stink bug” sometimes feeds on 
greenhouse cucumbers. The same preventive measures 
should be taken as suggested in the previous paragraph 
for the beetle. They inject a poisonous substance into 
the plants and also inoculate them with the dreaded 
disease, bacterial wilt. This well-known insect and its 
conspicuous eggs are easily seen and they should be 
removed and destroyed as soon as discovered. The 
sciara maggot, thrips, flea-hoppers and a few other in- 
sects of minor importance sometimes appear on green- 
house cucumbers. 
Diseases and their control are diecucstd in Chapter 
VIII, and soil sterilization in Chapter VI. The direc- 
tions in these chapters for the prevention and treatment 
of diseases affecting greenhouse vegetables apply to most 
of the cucumber diseases, so that a lengthy discussion 
here is unnecessary. All of the troubles to which the 
cucumber is subject when grown in the open may appear 
