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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 1
We have but little trouble with insects in our highly cultivated grounds;
what with continued moving of the soil by plowing and harrowing every
foot, from three to four times each season, incessant hoeing, and the
digging up of the crops, we give these pests but little chance for a foot-hold.
We are, however, occasionally troubled with Aphides, the "Green-fly,"
in our forcing houses of Lettuce. A complete remedy for this trouble,
in its early stages, is smoke from burning tobacco stems; or tobacco stems
steeped in water to give it about the color of strong tea, and applied
with a syringe, will thoroughly destroy them.
"Jumping jack," or the Turnip-fly,
occasions some trouble with late sowings of Cabbages, Turnips, and Radishes,
but we find an excellent preventative is dusting lime over the beds, immediately
the seeds begin to germinate. It is of the utmost importance to use preventives
in the case of insects, for if once they get a lodgement, it is almost
useless to attempt their destruction. The striped Cucumber-bug, which,
with us, attacks late sowings only, we have found to yield readily to
a few applications of bone-dust, which serves the double purpose of disturbing
the insect and encouraging the growth of the crop.
But our most formidable
enemy of the insect tribe is that which attacks the roots of the Cabbage
family, causing the destructive disease known as the "club-root." There
is a general misconception of the cause of this disease; happily our peculiar
location here, gives me the means, I believe, of thoroughly disproving
some of these absurd dogmas, that club-root is caused by "hog manure," "heavy soil," "light soil," etc. I do not doubt that it has appeared thousands
of times with just such conditions; yet, within three miles from the City
Hall of New York, I can show to-day, on the classic shores of Communipaw,
scores of acres that have been just so manured, both light soils and heavy
soils, that have grown Cabbages for twenty consecutive years, and yet,
the first appearance of club-root is yet to be seen. On the other hand,
I can show on soils, not more than a mile distant from those on the Communipaw
shore, where the ground is cultivated in the very best possible manner,
and where every variety of manure has been tried, and yet it is impossible
to get a crop of Cauliflower or Cabbage clear from club-root for two years
in succession. Now, the reason of the immunity from the pest on the one
variety of the soil, and not on the other, does not, to us, admit of the
slightest particle of doubt. On the shore side, and for nearly a mile
inland, there are regular deposits of oyster shell, mixed with the soil,
almost as we find pebbles in a gravelly soil; now, our theory is, that
the insect which occasions the club-root, cannot exist in contact with
the lime, which of course is present in large amount in a soil containing
such abundance of oyster shell. Reasoning from this, we have endeavored
to bring up soils deficient in shell, by heavy dressings of lime; this
answered, however, only temporarily, and we found it too expensive to
continue it. The increasing demands for manures in the vicinity of New
York, has rendered them of late years scarce and high in price, so that
we were necessitated to begin the use of guano and other concentrated
manures, and as this was rather new with us in our market gardens, we
have had the pleasure of some very interesting experiments. Last season,
in my grounds at Jersey City, where we have never been able to get two
crops of Cabbages successively, without having them injured by club-root,
my foreman suggested to me to experiment with a bed, of about half an
acre, to be planted with early Wakefield Cabbage. One-half of this he
proposed to manure at the rate of 75 tons per acre with stable manure,
the other half with flour of bone, at the rate of 2000 pounds per acre;
this was accordingly done in the usual way, by sowing the bone-dust on
the ground after plowing, and then thoroughly harrowing in. During the
month of May we could see no perceptible difference in the bed; but just
as soon as our first hot days in June came, down wilted the portion that
had been dressed with stable manure, showing a well-defined line the whole
length of the bed, and, on pulling the plants up, we found that our enemy
was at work, while in that portion that had been dressed by the bone-dust,
not a wilted plant could be seen, but, on the contrary, the crop had most
unusual vigor. This experiment has been to me one of the most satisfactory
I ever tried; it still further proves, that this destructive insect cannot
exist to an injurious extent in a soil impregnated with lime, and also
proves, that we have a most effective remedy in this valuable and portable
manure. The experiment was, however, to me rather a costly one; our past
experience told us that there was no reason to expect that the portion,
on which the stable manure was used, would not be attacked by club-root,
as it had borne a crop of Cabbage the previous year, and nearly twenty
years' working of that soil had shown that this crop could never be grown
successively two years; but experiments, to be satisfactory, must be done
on a scale of some magnitude, and although I lost some $200 by the difference
in the crop, I believe it to have been a profitable investment.
I have incidentally stated that the Cabbage crop, treated in the usual
manner, can only be grown every alternate year, the reason of which we
infer to be, that the insect is harmless to the plant when in the perfect
state the first season, but that it is attracted by the plant, deposits
its eggs in the soil, and that in the larva condition in which it appears
the second year, it attacks the root. Whether this crude theory is correct
or not, I will not presume to say, but if it is not, how can we account
for the fact or our being able to grow this plant, free from its ravages
every alternate year, while, if we attempt to do so successively without
the use of lime, it is certain to be attacked?
All authorities on gardening, that I have had access to, seem to be unaware
of the fact that club-root is never seen in soils impregnated with shells.
This variety of soil is not common. I have never seen it anywhere except
here, and as I have before said, this peculiarity of location most fortunately
gives a certain clue to the facts, and directly points out the remedy,
which, I think, we have found to be in the copious use of bone-dust as
manure.
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