Keowee Courier

DO NOT GAMBLE
WITH BOLL WEEVIL
There is Great Danger in
Banking on Last Year's
Experience, Says the Experts on Subject.

Clemson College, Feb. 19.-Cotton growers who do not prepare to fight the boll weevil are taking a big gamble and are likely to lose.
The fact that it was unnecessary to fight the boll weevil in our cotton fields last year has deceived many growers into the false belief that the boll weevil is no longer a great menace to the cotton crop. This, however, is a dangerous mistake, says Dr. F. H. Lathrop, entomologist, who explains the failure of the boll weevil to develop in destructive numbers and the absence of serious boll weevil injury throughout most of the cotton States during the past season resulted from a very unusual combination of weather conditions, which is not at all likely to occur again for a long period of years.
Weather conditions in South Carolina last fall, Dr. Lathrop further states, were favorable for boll weevil development, and observations showed that an unusually large number of the weevils went into hibernation. The winter, so far, has not been severe enough to destroy any unusual proportion of these hibernating weevils. It is probable that there will be at least normal infestation in our cotton fields next spring. The rapidity of weevil development in the fields next summer, and the consequent injury to the cotton crop, will depend upon the kind of season that we have. Unless the season is very unusual, the boll weevil may be expected to cause injury in many of the cotton fields.
It is only by the practice of the methods which have been thoroughly tested and demonstrated in every cotton State that a cotton crop can be assured in spite of the weevil. Briefly, the standard methods of boll weevil control are as follows:
1. Use tested seed of quick-maturing varieties.
2. Plant as early as the seed-bed is warm and danger of frost is past.
3. Fertilize highly where natural fertility is lacking.
4. Poison the cotton plants in the pre-square stage, provided as many as twenty weevils to the acre are found.
5. After squares begin to form use calcium arsenate dust when the weevils have punctured ten to fifteen per cent of the squares.