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Post by DirtDiva Admin on Aug 20, 2020 16:34:05 GMT -6
Samuel B. Green, the author of Popular Fruit Growing (1909) , claims that you can control codling moths if you keep hogs in your orchard to clean up the fallen, infested fruits. Green also recommends wrapping six-inch-wide bands of burlap around the tree trunks and checking underneath these covers—once every 10 days from June to September—to destroy the moth's larvae and chrysalides that will hide there. And, should you be troubled with the plum curculio, Samuel B. recommends early morning exercise; he says that—if you place a sheet beneath the tree around dawn and then pound the trunk and branches with your hands or a rubber mallet—the insects will fall to the cloth and can be destroyed in hot water.
archive.org/details/popularfruitgrow02gree/page/n3/mode/2up
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Post by DirtDiva Admin on Aug 20, 2020 16:42:40 GMT -6
The American Fruit Culturist (1855), by John J. Thomas. This volume suggests that peach worms and borers can be kept away if you heap about "half a peck" of air-slaked lime or wood ashes around each tree's trunk every spring. Then, come autumn, you can simply spread the material out beneath the tree for fertilizer. Thomas also laments the morals of his day with a recommendation on how to control human fruit pilferers ... he suggests planting a good, thick thorn hedge around the entire orchard!www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/116976#page/11/mode/1up
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Post by DirtDiva Admin on Aug 20, 2020 16:49:24 GMT -6
Jacob Biggle's Biggle Berry Book (1899) is part of a series called the Biggle Farm Library and offers the latest berry culture ideas of its day. Old Jacob covers everything from a recipe for a fertilizer for strawberries (chicken manure, bone meal, and wood ashes) to a method of salvaging partially winter-killed blackberry canes (cut them back to within a foot of the ground in the spring)www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/77034#page/9/mode/1up
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Post by DirtDiva Admin on Aug 20, 2020 16:57:35 GMT -6
1906 college text called Economic Entomology, by John B. Smith. I almost didn't buy the volume—because I thought it might be too technical—but it's been a real storehouse of information. Economic Entomology is a guide for the identification of insects, complete with control techniques for those pests that are harmful to crops. Although much of the scientific jargon has changed, Smith's suggestions are still valid today. For example, he advocates painting tree trunks with whitewash to prevent borer damage, and dusting asparagus with finely powdered lime every morning to discourage the asparagus beetle larvae.
Another of Smith's "pet" solutions is tobacco as pesticide—used either dry or as a decoction. He claims that coarse tobacco leaves and stems (if worked into the soil around a tree trunk all the way out to the branch drip-line) will keep root lice away from peach trees. And one pound of tobacco—boiled in a gallon of water—is the author's chosen pesticide for infestations of plant lice, leaf hoppers, flea beetles, and soft-bodied insects in general. Smith warns, however, that at this concentration the extract might "spot delicate leaves and flowers". (Smokers can draw their own conclusions from the turn-of-the-century practice of fumigating greenhouses with tobacco smoke ... "kills bugs dead!")
Economic Entomology also recommends pyrethrum powder (stretched with two parts "cheap flour"), white hellebore, quassia, kainite, sulfur, and even hot water as weapons for the gardener to consider. The hot water—Smith claims—is (at 125°F) safe to use on most foliage but fatal to many insects. The book even suggests methods of ridding tree bark of lichen and other plant growths. Smith maintains that if you wash the limbs and bark with a strong solution of caustic soda or potash (one pound to two gallons of water), you'll discourage these parasites and stimulate your tree's bark!
The ultimate protection of protections, though, says Smith, is "good farming." He advises that crops be kept in "the most vigorous possible condition, with plenty of plant food ... and—in orchards—allow no dead wood of any kind to remain over the winter season."archive.org/details/economicentomolo00smit_0
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Post by handmaid on Sept 9, 2020 20:38:52 GMT -6
Very interesting!
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