Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them | Page 8

new setting of fine roots; others challenge their vigor by making it a rule to do all transplanting under the heat of mid-day. I think there is not much of reason in this latter course. The young plants can be set out almost as fast as a man can walk, by holding the roots close to one side of the hole made by the dibble, and at the same moment pressing earth against them with the other hand.

PROTECTING THE PLANTS FROM THEIR ENEMIES.
As soon as they have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes the size of a pin point. He is so active when disturbed that his motions cannot be followed by the eye, and his sense of danger is so keen that only by cautiously approaching the plant can he be seen at all. The delay of a single day in protecting the young plants from his ravages will sometimes be the destruction of nearly the entire piece. Wood ashes and air-slaked lime, sprinkled upon the plants while the leaves are moist from either rain or dew, afford almost complete protection. The lime or ashes should be applied as soon as the plant can be seen, for then, when they are in their tenderest condition, the fly is most destructive. I am not certain that the alkaline nature of these affords the protection, or whether a mere covering by common dust might not answer equally well. Should the covering be washed off by rain, apply it anew immediately after the rain has ceased, and so continue to keep the young plants covered until the third or fourth leaves are developed when they will have become too tough to serve as food for this insect enemy.
A new enemy much dreaded by all cabbage raisers will begin to make his appearance about the time the flea disappears, known as the cut-worm. This worm is of a dusky brown color, with a dark colored head, and varies in size up to about two inches in length. He burrows in the ground just below the surface, is slow of motion, and does his mischievous work at night, gnawing off the young plants close at the surface of the ground. This enemy is hard to battle with. If the patch be small, these worms can be scratched out of their hiding places by pulling the earth carefully away the following morning for a few inches around the stump of the plant destroyed, when the rascals will usually be found half coiled together. Dropping a little wood ashes around the plants close to the stumps is one of the best of remedies; its alkaline properties burning his nose I presume. A tunnel of paper put around the stump but not touching it, and sunk just below the surface, is recommended as efficacious; and from the habits of the worm I should think it would prove so. Perpendicular holes four inches deep and an inch in diameter is said to catch and hold them as effectively as do the pit falls of Africa the wild animals. Late planted cabbage will suffer little or none from this pest, as he disappears about the middle of June. Some seasons they are remarkably numerous, making it necessary to replant portions of the cabbage patch several times over. I have heard of as many as twenty being dug at different times the same season out of one cabbage hill. The farmer who tilled that patch earned his dollars. When the cabbage has a stump the size of a pipe stem it is beyond the destructive ravages of the cut-worm, and should it escape stump foot has usually quite a period of growth free from the attacks of enemies. Should the season prove unpropitious and the plant be checked in its growth, it will be apt to become "lousy," as the farmers term it, referring to its condition when attacked by a small green insect known as aphid?, which preys upon it in myriads; when this is the case the leaves lose their bright green, turn of a bluish cast, the leaf stocks lose somewhat of their supporting powers, the leaves curl up into irregular shapes, and the lower layer turns black and drops off, while the ground under the plant appears covered with the casts or bodies of the insects as with a white powder. When in this condition the plants are in a very bad way.
Considering the circumstances under which this insect appears, usually in