CLOVER STEM-BORER AS AN ALFALFA PEST. 23 
when the crop is in full bloom, and in the case of alfalfa when the 
crop is about one-tenth in bloom. Then, provided that the land 
has in the past received proper cultivation and crop rotation, and 
the crop is a thrifty growing one, the borers will not have been able 
to develop to adults before the hay crop is removed, and thus, as 
has been shown in the previous discussion of larval habits, all larvee 
and pupze will be destroyed. 
Where an alfalfa or clover crop is let go to seed, sonditons are 
ideal for the development of adults, and if the ree is producing 
seed, there is no remedy for this except that the beetle must be con- 
trolled in all waste places and adjoining hay fields. if this practice 
is followed, there will be but few beetles to oviposit in seed fields, 
- and hence the damage will be reduced to a minimum. 
BURNING RUBBISH. 
Since these beetles pass their winter stage under rubbish, grass, 
etc., the farmers of any section of the country should make it a point, 
each fall or early in the winter when the frost has killed all weeds and 
erasses, to burn or otherwise destroy all grass, weeds, and rubbish in 
waste places such as roadsides and ditch banks, and eliminate these 
places of hibernation, thus reducing the numbers of beetles as well as 
other insect pests. 
CROP ROTATION. 
In the red clover growing sections of the country, proper systems 
of rotation have already been well developed and are used, as a general 
rule; but in a great many of the large alfalfa districts of the West 
and Southwest, farmers are too prone to allow alfalfa to stand in the 
same field for a number of years without rotating it with some other 
crop or crops. Where such conditions prevail, the land becomes 
“alfalfa-sick,”” and the crop does not grow in as thrifty a manner as 
it would were the land planted to some. other crop during a certain 
series of years. _n the clover districts this is well emphasized, and 
alfalfa growers should take a lesson from clover growers. 
Where alfalfa is to be used as the hay crop, a rotation can be 
arranged to cover a much longer period of years than where red 
clover is used as a hay crop, since alfalfa can be left on the ground 
without a reduction in stand for a much longer time than ean red 
clover. The advent of Egyptian cotton culture in the valleys of the 
southwestern United States is doing much toward readjusting the 
plan of farm work, and the time is not far distant when asystem of crop 
rotation will be evolved that will include both cotton and alfalfa in ~ 
the rotation plan to the benefit of both crops and the elimination of 
many insect pests affecting them. 
