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Gardening for Profit
A Guide to the Successful Cultivation
of the Market and Family Garden
by
first published in 1866, reprinted from 1874 edition
Chapter XVII
Insects, Part 2
Another enemy of the Cabbage plant and one that is sometimes even more
destructive than the club root, is the Cabbage Caterpillar. This insect
is comparatively a new-comer, having been imported from Europe by way
of Canada. It is produced by the small white butterfly that is seen hovering
over the Cabbage patches in spring. It attacks the leaves of the plant,
and is such a voracious feeder that it will quickly destroy a whole plantation.
I am frequently applied to for a remedy for this pest, but regret to say
I know of none that is certain. Nothing is more difficult and unsatisfactory
than the attempt to defeat the ravages of insects in the open field, and
I have yet to know of any being entirely successful. In the long-cultivated
gardens of New Jersey and Long Island we do not suffer much from the ravages
of either of the above pests. The soil is so repeatedly turned over and
disturbed that I presume the maggot is not left long enough at rest to
develop itself in sufficient numbers to produce any great injury and the
luxurious growth resulting from the continued and heavy manuring seems
to be less inviting to the butterfly to lay her eggs than the feebler
growth of less fertile soils. Or it may be that the increase of English
sparrows is helping us in both these cases, by destroying the fly that
produces the maggot, or the small white butterfly that produces the caterpillar
itself, as I know they do with the rose-slug. At all events, the farmer
will gain by encouraging and caring for the sparrows.
A few years ago
the street trees of New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City were festooned
by myriads of the "measuring worm"; now, since the advent of the sparrows,
they are scarcely ever seen. The sparrows will live in any section of
the country if properly housed and fed in winter, and if such care was
general, we should hear fewer complaints of insect ravages. True, they
might exact wages for their services in requiring a little grain, but
of the two evils, better submit to that done by the birds than to the
insects.
I will relate an experiment to destroy the Cabbage Caterpillar, which
occurred during this month in my immediate neighborhood. One of my neighbors
found that the pest was attacking his Cabbages; he came to me and asked
what I thought of his using slaked lime to dust over them. I told him
I had but little faith in it. But he was resolved to try it, and put it
on at the rate of four or five barrels to the acre, carefully dusting
it on each plant. This was about the 1st of June. On the 17th he came
to me in triumph, saying that the remedy had been effectual, and that
there was hardly a caterpillar to be seen. Unfortunately for the experiment,
but fortunately for truth, another neighbor whose Cabbage patch had been
attacked at the same time, but had received no lime, was also entirely
clear of the caterpillar! The cure was traceable to another cause. We
had had a deluging rain, that swept off the caterpillars and started the
Cabbages into luxuriant growth at the same time. Had the insect come in
the legions it does in some places, had there been no rain, and had the
dry, hot weather continued, the lime dust would probably have failed.
Last summer I had with great care nursed along in my greenhouses for
many weeks a collection of rare varieties of German Stock Gillyflowers,
a plant belonging to the same natural order (Cruciferĉ) as the Cabbage.
Upwards of two thousand plants were set out in June, on rather poor soil;
by the middle of July they had made splendid plants, one foot across,
and just as they were bursting into bloom we observed the little white
butterfly moving amongst them, and knew what might be expected to follow.
Lime dust, solutions of carbolic soap, whale oil soap, and sundry other
things were used, all to no effect, and by middle of August the plants
were literally eaten up by the caterpillar.
There is nothing more unpleasant
than to tell any one suffering under a calamity that there is no tangible
remedy; but it is infinitely better to do so than to delude them with
a false one. I have been a worker of the soil since my boyhood, and every
year's experience convinces me of the helplessness of remedies against
insects or other blighting plagues that attack vegetation in the open
field. It is true that the amateur gardener may save his dozen or two
of cabbages or roses by daily picking off or destroying the insects;
but
when it comes to broad acres, I much doubt if ever any remedy will
be found to be practicable. We have one consolation in knowing that these
pests are only periodical, and never continue so as to permanently destroy.
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