Page Intro: Let’s take a look at how things used to be back in the good old days. First some Interesting advice from 1871, then a cool excerpt from 1894.
Interesting advice from 1871…
These are excerpts from: “The First Annual Report of the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture to His Excellency the Governor,” May 1, 1871, by James O. Adams, Secretary or New Hampshire Board of Agriculture. The names shown are New Hampshire towns. These are reports based on “any wide-awake farmer-“submitted reports to the board. They are telling of the pests and controls or “remedies” used. Good stuff. I think many conclusions can be drawn from reading this. I see desperate imaginations at work; a desire to prevent; a willingness to use whatever works, though; a mention of biocontrol forms and other very familiar techniques. Please enjoy this, I sure did.
Caterpillars and fall worms do much injury to our fruit trees, and are generally destroyed by burning their nests with some quick light. Black and striped bugs do much injury to vines. No remedy was sufficient to prevent their depredations the past season. The borer has done some injury to fruit trees, but of late years has nearly disappeared. — Henniker, NH
The maggot injures onions when we try to raise them; fine sawdust sprinkled liberally upon the row just before they come up is the best known remedy. The cabbage-fly is troublesome. A preventive is to dust plants when wet with bone dust, ashes, or plaster. — Fremont, NH
The many kinds of bugs that destroy vines. The most effectual means that is used to prevent their depredations is to take them between the thumb and finger and pinch them. — Londonderry, NH
Canker worms more than any or all others. Tarring is resorted to to destroy them, and if faithfully done is efficacious. — Stratham, NH
Canker-worm, tarred paper. Borers; remedy, flexible wire in hole. — Durham, NH
The common caterpillar is everywhere known, but we had none last spring. I don’t like shooting the nests or using a torch, but take them in season and grind them up by hand with an old mitten on. We have fought the canker worms for two or three years and think they’re played out, as few have been caught this spring. The most successful remedy here is the tarred paper or printer’s ink. Grasshoppers are troublesome some years, but don’t know where they are from or where’d they go. No remedy has been applied. Some have noticed a bug on the potatoes which they call a potato-bug; brown color, know nothing of its habit, no remedy suggested. — Rolinsford, NH
Catrepillars are very injurious to fruit trees; grasshoppers; remedy, keep turkeys! — Gilmanton, NH
White and wire worm, bee-moth and borers, very little is done to prevent their ravages; the skunk and crow destroy them, and we destroy these in turn. — Sandwich, NH
The apple-tree borer, curculio, cut-worm and weevil are the most injurious to crops and vegetation. No new method taken for their extermination. The best remedy is the Frenchman’s Flea Poultice. ‘First catch the insect, then tickle him with a picked stick under the fifth rib, and then when he opens his mouth put in de poudre, monsieur, he choke for sure. — Webster, NH
Good advice, huh? [Intro]
And a cool excerpt from 1894…
This is an excerpt from: An Island Garden (ISBN #0-917890-06-X) by Celia Leighton Thaxter, 1835-1894. For those who don’t know her, she has a famed garden on Appledore Island, one of the Isles of Shoals, six miles off the New Hampshire/Maine coast. A beautiful place, very wild and natural. I’ve been there many times, and to her garden as well. It is still visited to this day, now taken care of by volunteers.
In the thickest of my fight with the slugs someone said to me… — Celia Thaxter
Every living thing has its enemy; the enemy of the slug is the toad. Why don’t you import toads? — Someone
This passage does not progress rapidly or directly. It goes on to describe her writing afar, and actually obtaining toads. I love the advice of the “someone” in this. I may add more at some point if I find some good stuff. [Intro]
