Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1875 — The Potato Bug. [ARTICLE]

The Potato Bug.

A correspondent of the Live Stock Record says: The following remedy for preventing the .ravages of the much-dreaded potato bug is not only a cheap and simple one, but one which may be made very profitable to the farmer; and if true (though obtained from a source which I cannot doubt) is a discovery the value of which can scarcely be estimated. Your correspondent, while on a recent visit to Woodford, heard two prominent farmers of that county discussing the subject. They held that in planting Irish potatoes if every third row was left until the danger from frost had passed, and then planted in hemp, that no bugs, neither the terrapin-shaped Colorado or that species with long, striped backs, resembling the Spanish fly, would disturb a vine in the patch. The gentlemen did not profess to know or give any scientific explanation of the fact; but theirs was that the bugs had such an antipathy to the hemp or its peculiar odor that they would not live in its vicinity. They were convinced of the fact from the experience of several of their neighbors last year. It is a fact knqgu to gardeners and watermelon raiser” that a

plant set in a watermelon hill until the sprouts begin to vine will effectually prevent their being molested by bugs, and if, on sufficient trial, it is proven that hemp is as great a protector to the potato as it is thought by some to be, the discovery will indeed be a boon, not only to every agriculturist, but to the thousands of poor whose principal vegetable is the Irish potato.