Plant Sanitation. 



422 



[May, 1912. 



or animal (insect pest), and we find in 

 some of the oldest books on gardening 

 and entomology how the early farmer 

 and horticulturist had certain remedies 

 to combat the enemies of his crops with. 

 Many of these were rather queer in their 

 composition. I remember reading of a 

 remedy which was used in the Southern 

 States consisting of lime, soap and 

 whisky. 



Within the last decade great strides 

 have been made in fighting pests, but 

 it is not my intention to-day to dwell on 

 insecticides and their uses, nor on para- 

 sites and predaceous enemies cf our pests, 

 nor on the great benefits which have 

 been derived from such methods. I am 

 going to draw attention to a method 

 which I am sorry to say is but little 

 known in these Islands, and which, if, 

 taken up by the various growers, will 

 do much to check the ravages now 

 caused by various pests. I draw your 

 attention to the practice of clean culture. 

 Cleanliness on a farm, in a field, or in a 

 garden means much to the crops or to 

 plants and much toward the reduction 

 of pests. Why? Clean culture means 

 cleanliness ; the destruction of weeds, the 

 removal of crop remnants as soon as the 

 crop is done ; picking up and destroying 

 dropped fruit, removing, burning up, or 

 otherwise destroying all rubbish that 

 cumbers the ground. Experience has 

 shown that many of our pests are pro- 

 tected by these very materials which 

 we should get rid of. 



Take our melon fly as an example. 

 This pest has been in the Island over 

 twenty years, and it is to-day one of the 

 worst pests we have. It is next to 

 impossible to raise cucumbers, melons or 

 squash, and only by covering over these 

 is the grower rewarded by being able to 

 raise a few inferior melons. Why is 

 this so ? Anybody can go into the out- 

 skirts of Honolulu and he will sometimes 

 see fields of cucumbers, melons and the 

 like lying above the ground, and if he 

 should take the time and examine a 

 few, he would find them decayed and 

 alive with maggots, a large per cent, 

 being those of the melon fly. What it 



clean cultural practice were employed, 

 in gathering up and destroying of all 

 such rotten, infested produce ? Some 

 time ago I cut a small piece of a water 

 melon from one found in a field, and 

 placed it in one of my breeding jars. 

 From that piece, about 3 inches square, I 

 bred 109 melon fliee, not counting a large 

 number of decayed flies which also issued 

 from it, I have often wondered how 

 many flies could have been bred from 

 the melon and how many flies would 

 have bred from the field on which were 

 many hundreds of melons. Would clean 

 cultural practice pay in a case like this 

 one ? It surely would, and on account 

 of the habits of the insect, clean cultural 

 practice would be the only profitable 

 way of coping with the pest. I mention- 

 ed the destruction of weeds as pertain- 

 ing to clean cultural methods. Many 

 fields after being planted to various 

 vegetables are allowed to grow up in 

 weeds, and the crops usually are of 

 inferior quality. Not only that, but 

 certain pests are attracted to the weeds 

 and also find good food on the growing 

 crop. After the crop is harvested the 

 rubbish and weeds are usually allowed 

 to remain for some time, and many 

 insects collect and hibernate in the 

 tangled mass, patiently waiting for 

 the next planting to be made, Now that 

 the Mediterranean fruit fly is with us 

 we can readily see that the practice of 

 clean culture, the collecting and destroy- 

 ing of all infested fruit will do much 

 toward checking the pest. In fact, I 

 have already met several who have 

 started this method, and they have re- 

 ported improvement in their crop condi- 

 tions. 



In a vegetable garden not long ago I 

 saw a lot of old cabbage plants, the 

 remnants of the crop. The heads had 

 been cut out, and the stump left, and new 

 growth had started, and these plants 

 were completely covered with the cab- 

 bage aphis, and near by the ground had 

 been prepared for another cabbage crop. 

 Now, if the plants had been pulled up 

 and destroyed, the breeding place for 

 the apis would not exist, and the newly* 



