The Watchman And Southron

Handling The Weevil Situation

I want to give a few practical pointers that will help any farmer handle his boll weevil situation intelligently and effectively.

First, I would never poison unless the cotton needed it. To tell whether it needs it or not, walk over the fields and examine the green squares on the stalks as you go. In doing this, I count the squares as I go, and pick off all of those that are punctured. Then when I get across, and have looked at say 200 squares, and have say 50 punctured ones in my hands that I found in that number, the infestation will be 25 per cent.

Don't just look for squares on the ground, or look for yellow ones on the stalks, or flared open ones. The cotton can be almost ruined and very little of any of these be in evidence.

The only real way to find out what you have, there is to go over it and look at the green squares as outlined above. This matter is certainly serious enough for each farmer to bother himself to this extent about it.

However, if you won't do this so that you might use poison intelligently, my advice is to shoot it to all the cotton. You will waste a lot of poison this way, but you will keep the weevil down in those places where they are bad.

You usually find the worst infestations in cotton bordering on swamps, woods, out-buildings and the like.

Cotton, in large openings like they have around Dalzell is liable to get by even this bad weevil year without the need of poison. The important thing for each man to do is go out there in the fields and see if his cotton needs it.

At this season when the infestations run from 15 to 20 per cent I would start with a series of three applications applied at about 6-day intervals.

If any application is washed off by rain before it has been on for two nights, repeat it and don't count it as a regular application.

Apply as near 4 pounds per acre as you can. That will do as much good as twice that amount, besides the saving it incurs.

DO NOT TRY TO APPLY CALCIUM ARSENATE DURING THE MIDDLE PART OF THE DAY!

All night work is not necessary, although that is the best time to apply it. To get around that though and not lose in effectiveness, and to cover as much ground as all night running would, start poisoning at about 4 a. m. and run until about 9 a. m. or as long as cotton is damp from dew. Then start up again about 5 p. m. when the cotton taken on that wilt or goes to sleep as we call it, and run till ten o'clock. That will give you 10 hours work and you haven't had to stay up all night. Moonlight nights now make early night poisoning pleasant.

On many farms only a few fields are found that need poison now. In those cases where there is not so much of this work to do I would apply the poison only in the late afternoon and early night. That has the very minimum chance to be washed off before it has done some good, because it has a night right ahead of it in which it can work.

In poisoning, DON'T SKIP ROWS, and DON'T DEPEND ON THE DRIFT!

Shoot the dust right down into the foliage of every stalk. That is the only method that we are sure works at this time.

J. M. ELEAZER,
County Agent.
Sumter, S. C. July 12, 1927.