December, 1891. 
209 
r 
ORC H RRD 
AND 
GARDE 
V~ grown as a market sort. There is room in 
it for a great improvement as an amateur 
tomato and we shall continue to grow it for 
this purpose. We tried several other new 
sorts, but find none berter than the list first 
named. As far as earliness is concerned 
the Early Ruby and Atlantic Prize seem to 
lead. Station Tree did nothing whatever. 
W. F. Massey. 
Suggestions for Winter. 
At all points north of Baltimore celery 
should now be in winter quarters. Wher- 
ever the climate is not too severe the method 
of growing in vogue around Baltimore, the 
bed method I have described, is best as the 
lifting for winter storing is avoided, and 
the celery is more crisp kept where it grew. 
If very heavily covered with forest leaves 
or straw and a board roof thrown over to 
keep off excessive moisture this method of 
^ growing might be adopted much north of 
Baltimore. The late Peter Henderson was 
of the opinion that it would not be practi- 
cable at New York, though He said he 
wished it was, as he would prefer the plan. 
In this latituJe it is not best to cover the 
celery tops entirely with earth, as it is apt 
to cause decay, but just before Christmas 
cover the whole with pine leaves enough to 
keep the soil and tops from freezing. 
As suggested last month, look after the 
Irish potatoes stored in cellars and see that 
they are in total darkness and that the tem- 
perature is kept hovering down not far above 
the point of freezing water — 32° won’t 
freeze a potato — but for safety keep them 
a few degrees warmer. 
The same remarks may as well apply to 
winter apples. 
Lettuce, in frames, which is intended to 
be headed for Christmas must be kept much 
closer than if simply being wintered over, 
.. and being in a growing condition will be 
easily hurt by freezing. Therefore cover 
the frames with mats so as to entirely ex- 
clude frost. I have frequently seen gar- 
deners cover their frames carefully with 
mats and leave only the thickness of the 
plank to protect the sides, and in a long 
cold spell the frost creeps under the sides 
and plays havoc. Therefore bank the sides 
of the frames with earth and rough manure 
to keep ihe earth from freezing. In this 
latitude frames can be run with lettuce 
without any mats, and head lettuce be had 
at all times by replanting as fast as cut 
from a bed of plants kept in reserve in the 
open ground. Southern gardeners are slow 
to learn the great value of cold frames in a 
mild climate. The uses to which the sashes 
can be applied here are too numerous to 
detail, but can soon be learned by any ob- 
servant man in handling them. When 
southern market gardeners fully realize the 
^ value of glass sashes they will abandon the 
poor substitute some now use, oiled cotton 
cloth. 
Near by me is a man who makes a busi- 
ness of gro wing sweet potatoes plants for 
sale. He has a number of long beds under 
which flues are run with a furnace at the 
lower end of each bed. No glass or any 
cover is used over the beds, but fire heat 
alone is depended upon to keep off frost. 
Day and night the furnaces are fired with 
pine wood. He raises a great many plants, 
but the expenditure for fuel is very large, 
and might all be avoided, for cold frames in 
this section will grow sweet potato plants 
as early as the weather will admit of their 
going out. So I say, don't run a fire in the 
vain effort to heat all out doors. — W. F. M. 
The Harlequin Cabbage-Bug. 
Murgantia (or Strachia ) Mstrionica 
ILL THIS well-known 
southern pest to crucif- 
erous plants ever be- 
come a serious enemy 
to cabbage in the north- 
ern 'states? This is a 
question of considerable 
importance to every 
truck-farmer and gardener in the North. 
Wherever it occurs, in seasons favorable to 
its increase, it is perhaps the most destruc- 
tive of the numerous enemies of the cabbage 
crop, not alone from its rapid breeding and 
from its voracity in every stage of its exis- 
tence, but from its tenacity of life and its 
non- susceptibility to all the ordinary insect- 
icide mixtures. 
Thk HARLEQUIN Cabbage-Bug. Fig. 479. 
From the fact that it was originally a 
Central American and Mexican insect and 
from the fact that, while it reached in its 
northward spread to North Carolina at least 
as early as 1867, it has not yet made its 
appearance, so far as we have learned, north 
of Delaware, it may be fair to assume that 
northern cabbage growers will rest under 
the burden of cabbage-worm, cabbage-mag- 
got. and fl°a-beetle, without having this 
still more destructive insect added to the 
number. But it is still occupying new ter- 
ritory slowly year by year along the ficti- 
tious border-line, and it is known to live at 
an elevation of 9,000 feet in New Mexico, 
and we should therefore not be greatly sur- 
prised if some fine morning some enter- 
prising Jersey truck-farmer should wake 
up and find his cabbage field swarming with 
this voracious pest. 
New fields have been invaded the past 
season in Maryland and northern Virginia 
and one farmer has told me that he lost ten 
thousand plants in July. Mr. L. S. Abbott 
of Falls Church, Va., tells me that eight 
years ago the bugs swarmed over his cab- 
bages in countless numbers, changing them 
in an almost incredibly short space of time 
from vigorous green plants into brown, 
shrivelled, worthless remnants. 
The insect has been written about by Dr. 
Gideon Lincecum in the Practical Entomolo- 
gist, by Glover in the Reports of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture for 1867 and 1870, by 
Riley in the fourth of his reports on the 
Insects of Missouri, by Lintner in his first 
New York report, and shorter notPs by other 
writers have been published since. The 
accompanying illustration, which is from 
Dr. Riley’s report, will enable the readers of 
Orchard and Garden to recognize the pest 
in all of its stages. The eggs are shown at 
c, natural size, and at d and e, enlarged, 
from the side and from above. They are 
light green or white in color with two black 
bands and resemble a little double row of 
barrels set on end. The young bug is shown 
at a, the half-grown insect at b, and the 
full-grown winged bug at g and h. The 
colors are black variegated with red or 
yellow, and their arrangement is such that 
the creature is known in some parts of the 
South as the “ calico-back.” It is said also 
that at the close of the war when it made 
its appearance in Georgia it was called the 
“Abe Lincoln bug,” both to express the 
opinion of the Georgia farmers as to its de- 
testable qualities, and on account of their 
idea that it was left behind by northern 
troops, just as that well known enemy to 
grain is known as the “ Hessian fly ” on the 
supposition that it was introduced by the 
Hessian troops in the Revolutionary War. 
The harlequin cabbage-bug will grow 
from the egg to the winged form in two 
weeks in Missouri and in from 16 to 18 days 
in North Carolina and remains in the egg 
state but six days. Thus there must be a 
number of generations each season although 
Glover thought there were but two. It 
passes the winter as a full grown bug, under 
sticks, stones, leaves and other rubbish, and 
in thick grass in fence-corners. 
And now for the all-important matter of 
remedies: — As before stated, the bug is 
peculiarly non-susceptible to the action of 
insecticides. Being a sucking insect the 
arsenical mixtures have no effect upon it, 
and. when in its full vigor in spring and 
summer, hot water and kerosene emulsion, 
unless so hot and so strong as to kill the 
plant, will not harm it. Diluted pyrethrum 
and the tobacco preparations are also in- 
effectual. A Texas correspondent of the 
Department of Agriculture, as stated in In- 
sect Life (vol. iii, p. 127) tried dusting the 
plants with lime in the early morning when 
the dew was on. The first application was 
only partly successful, but upon repeating 
it a second and a third time at intervals 
of 10 days or two weeks the bugs finally 
disappeared. His neighbors tried the rem- 
edy with equal success. The lime was 
sprinkled on until the leaves were white 
without harm to the plants. Dr. Lincecum, 
who evidently had only a small garden, 
kept them down by carefully watching 
them from the beginning of the season and 
picking them off by hand, removing from 
36 to 60 full grown bugs every day for four 
