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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 14

Prevention

Prevention.

After an attack of aphides the wheat stubbles should be scarified or cultivated and the rubbish burnt, or the land should at once be deeply ploughed. If the succeeding crop is to be tares, trifolium, potatoes, turnips, or mangels, thorough cleaning and destruction of couch and other grasses would be sufficient. A succeeding white straw crop should be avoided after a bad attack, as the aphides infest all crops of this character. Deep ploughing and thoroughly and deeply burying the stubble might prevent their recurrence. It would be safer to take another crop.

After an attack care should be taken to extirpate grasses and grassy growths from the fields and from the outsides of fields. It is usual in some counties for wheat to follow rye grass and clover ley, one or two years old, after oats, or after wheat. Should aphides have infested the previous oat or wheat crops, they might be carried on, and would probably be carried on, to the next corn crop by the rye grass and other grasses in the leys. This would be detected by observation and if aphides were found measures should be taken to circumvent them by altering the rotation, or by closely feeding the ley with sheep and treading it well before it was ploughed.

It may be suggested here that a strong magnifying lens for the pocket is a necessary part of a practical farmer's equipment in these days when insects are so numerous and rampant, and that it is as requisite to carefully examine the roots and lower stems of plants and the surface soil around them when walking round the farm, as to observe their upper parts within more convenient reach, or as to watch and note the signs of the weather.