Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1916 — HOW ABOUT THIS? [ARTICLE]

HOW ABOUT THIS?

ARE YOU MAKING THINGS AGREEABLE TO THE HESSIAN FLY? “The farmers should be no more anxious to provide food, nesting places, and costly ctare for this pest than they are to invite typhoid fever, smallpox, or the foot-and-mouth disease into their communities and homes, yet this wery thing is being done in hundreds of communites by a few careless farmers who remain indifferent to their neighbors’ pleas, to the warnings of agricultural authorities, and to their own responsibilities,” are the words of a noted institute worker at a farmers’ meeting in the wheat belt a few days ago. He further declared that co-opera-tion among farmers by late sowing, good seedbed preparation, and the use of available plant food to hasten the growth and resistant qualities of the crop, were the methods of saving the millions of dollars lost annually through this pest. The reason for late sowing is that, since the life of the fly is so short, it will have either died or have been killed by the first frost. But late sowing takes care of the fall brood only, and other steps are necessary to forestall the spring brood. This leads to the matter of seedbed preparation and the good found In a fine and well-prepared seed bed lies in the increased root system and feeding ability of the plant, for no plant can be better than its root system since the roots are the plant’s mouths. Hardness, shallowness, dryness and loose- ’ ness of the ground spell a poor crop in advance.

Late in the fall, at the time of sowing, less plant food is being made available than in the warm summer months. Particularly is this so of ammonia, that indispensible element which makes the rank vegetative growth possible. It is also ammonia that puts the rich, green healthy color in the young plants, and without which the yield of grain cannot be high. Here is where the commercial fertilizer containing at least two per cent ammonia has been returning one and two dollars and even more in profit, for every dollar invisted. The fly does not thrive on healthy, vigorous, growing wheat. The plant juice is so diluted that it does not hold enough to furnish the nutriment it requires. Consequently it turns its attack to the weaker plants, those with sap more concentrated, and the damage to the crop increases with the larger number of sickly plants. Sickly, weak and unhealthy plants are the cause of more injury from the pest than result from the fly's attack.