Bulletin 151, Truck and Garden Insects


dump them into a pond, or to bury them. They should be cov-
ered with at least a foot of well-packed soil (or more if it is
very sandy) to ensure that the larvae or the moths will not be
able to make their way to the surface. The practice of dump-
ing the wormy and cull fruits beside the packing house or along
the roadway cannot be too severely condemned. A large per-
centage of the worms will complete their development in the
pile, pupate in the ground and later come out as moths to
augment later infestations. If a wormy tomato is thrown down
in the field, the caterpillar will soon attack another tomato; or,
if full grown, will enter the ground to pupate. It would be
better not to pick the tomato at all than to throw it on the
ground in the patch, as the caterpillars will more quickly leave
the detached and wilting fruit and attack a new one. Wormy
tomatoes can perhaps best be sorted out at the packing house.
If these caterpillars are destroyed it will greatly reduce the
number in succeeding generations. This has been thoroly proven
by experiments on a large scale. In one experiment conducted
by Director P. H. Rolfs, the wormy tomatoes were carefully
picked up from one field while in a neighboring field they were
neglected. In the former, at the close of the season, there was
scarcely any increase in the number of worms, while in the
latter field, 80 percent of the fruits of the later pickings was
ruined. It is not too much to say that for every worm the
grower destroys early in the season he will save a crate of
tomatoes later on. Each moth may lay as many as 500 eggs
and there is a generation every 30 days under the most favor-
able weather conditions.
 Clean Up the Field.-As soon as possible after the close of
the picking season, the vines with infested fruit should be
burned or plowed under. This is very important as a means of
combating, not only this, but other insects and fungus diseases
as well. Growers sometimes object to burning old plants on
the theory that they are destroying so much fertilizer which
would be returned to the soil by the rotting plants. While it is
true that some of the organic matter would be destroyed, the
loss is infinitesimal in comparison with that resulting from the
injuries caused by the insects and fungi if they are allowed to
live over.
 FLORIDA FLOWER-THRIPS (Frankliniella bispinosus projects)
 This is a very common insect usually found in small num-
 bers on a variety of blossoms, including those of tomatoes and