RAGWORT PREVENTION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 451, 8 February 1933, Page 6

RAGWORT PREVENTION

J

. CA'TLEY.

(To the Editor.) Sir — Lilce most farmers these days I have the ragwort problem to look after. I have been thinking that it is really about time that something should comej to attack it, just as it is with most crops we cultivate. With' the potato we have blight, the turnips, the fiy pest, with the; grass grub in some parts in the summer, and so on. I have discovered now that the ragwort at Te Pu is affected with a borer which is doing good work. The moth' lays the eggs where the leaf joins the stem and covers them with a woolly substance. They hatch there and enter the stem in their larva stagei and at

once begin their work of eating out the stem which slowly dies. Most of the plants are affected - with the borer. Some are dead right down the roots and are easily pulled out. This is the most useful ragwort destroying insect I have seen, and is certainly doing good work as it seems to stop the plants from seeding. At least 75 per cent. of the plants seem to be infected. I have not heai-d of anyone who has noticed this borer before and was wondering if it is attacking the ragwort in any other part of the district or elsewhere. I am sending a few plants and also a few grubs in a box to the Department of Agriculture, Wellington. I use on my Hamurana . farm the lime iand sodium chlorate mixture and have found it most effective. Quite a lot of the plants at Te Pu which' have died from the grub look as though they had been doised with the mixture. — I am. etc..

Ngongotaha, Fiebruary 6. :