Some Enemies of the Garden 



Glenn W. Herrick 

 Professor of Economic Entomology, Cornell University 



It is unfortunate for us that there are other creatures who appre- 

 ciate the excellent quality of our vegetables as food quite as much 

 as we do. Therefore it is quite necessary for the gardener to get 

 acquainted with all of these depredators and learn to know them 

 by sight and by name and also to understand their ways of life, 

 so that he may know how to get rid of them. 



Enemies of the Cabbage Family 

 There are many insects that enjoy feasting upon the leaves or 

 stems of cabbage, turnip, and cauliflower. The more important 

 ones are the imported cabbage worm, the cabbage maggot, the 

 cabbage aphid, the cabbage looper and certain cut worms. 



The Imported Cabbage Worm: We all know this as the common 

 green velvety caterpillar that gnaws holes in the leaves of cabbage 

 in nearly every garden. These are the offspring of the pretty white 

 butterflies which we see fluttering over our garden looking so inno- 

 cent. The male butterfly has two black spots on the front wings 

 and the female one. 



The mother butterfly flits rather rapidly over the cabbages 

 occasionally dipping downward now and then to a cabbage and 

 stopping a moment to deposit a cream-colored egg on a leaf. 

 This egg hatches in a few days into the velvety caterpillars that 

 grow fast and eat ravenously often devouring much of the outer 

 leaves and working down into the heads. They not only eat into 

 the cabbage head but they muss it up by depositing brownish 

 masses of refuse material. The caterpillars reach their growth in 

 about two weeks when they change to chrysalids and in about a 

 week more the butterflies emerge. There may be three generations 

 a year each generation usually becoming larger in number than the 

 preceding one. 



This common cabbage pest is best controlled by spraying the 

 plants with a soapy solution of arsenate of lead. The mixture is 

 made by dissolving four pounds of laundry soap in 4 or 5 gallons 

 of hot water and then adding enough water to make 50 gallons. 

 To this there should then be added three pounds of paste or one and 

 one-half pounds of powdered arsenate of lead. The spraying should 



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