Greenwood County History- War On Chinch Bugs-
War on Chinch Bugs
The methods and results of combating chinch bugs evolved over many years of trial and error. A previous article on chinch bugs talked about the use of fire and burning grass in 1930 to control them. This article, from a June 1913 edition of The Eureka Herald, will take a different approach to controlling chinch bugs.
“The thing of liveliest interest these days to farmer and likewise to everyone else, next to the prospects for a good rain, is the best means of fighting chinch bugs, which have been present in large quantities all season, and after having been in a large measure responsible for the loss of the oats crop, are now moving on the wheat, corn and kaffir. The dry season has been especially favorable for their propagation. Their number is legion, and the only chance for getting ahead of them lies in a general soaking rain, which the county has not had for eight weeks. In many places the crops have been burned to exterminate them, others would have been burned but for the fact that the fields were too green. The efforts of the farmers now are to confine the bugs to one place and keep them from devouring more fields. The pests are quiet during morning hours unless the grain is disturbed, so the war is waged during the afternoons and evenings.
Several of the progressive farmers of this vicinity have been experimenting during the past two weeks, using methods approved by the state and U.S. agricultural departments and issued in government bulletins.
For more than two weeks J.W. Hinshaw has been trying to keep the bugs from a seventy-acre cornfield, just east of Eureka, north of the cemetery. Across the railroad he had a 30-acre field of wheat, which the bugs devoured. This field was burned to exterminate them, but failed of the purpose and as the bugs were beginning to cross the railroad right of way and enter the cornfield, a deep furrow was plowed at the edge of the field. Into this furrow about 120 rods in length, Mr. Hinshaw placed a wool twine, which he keeps covered with tar and crude oil, saturating it daily. About 4 p.m. the bugs begin moving on the corn. The tarred string cuts short their progress. At close intervals along the furrow post holes have been dug, and into these the bugs fall by the million, as much as a pint having been found in a single hole. A lighted torch, made by tying sacking to a heavy wire, and saturating it with kerosene, is applied to every hole and the bugs are burned by wholesale. Mr. Hinshaw reports that after more than two weeks of this treatment, used daily from 4 to 7 p.m., he can begin to see a slight decrease in the numbers. He is satisfied that without this treatment this fine field of corn would have been by this time entirely destroyed. Most of the bugs burned are young ones and can not fly. After they are able to fly, extermination is much more difficult. Some few have been blown by the wind and have flown across into the corn and a few rows of corn at the edge of the field have been treated with kerosene to prevent them entering further.
H.G. Brookover is another farmer who is trying the tarred string method. On his farm the bugs got in their work on a field of oats, destroying the crop. Mr. Brookover is endeavoring to keep them out of the corn and kaffir and has plowed a furrow 80 rods long and keeps tarred twine in it. Instead of cremation, Mr. Brookover drowns the bugs in a mixture of kerosene and water, with which the holes along the furrows are kept filled. This is the second week for the treatment and thus far it has been successful in preventing their spread.
S. Croft and son Roland Croft of Twin Oaks farm, near Fall River, has tried still another way of getting rid of the pests. As the bugs were moving on the corn, three deep furrows were plowed at the edge of the field and the dirt in these furrows was kept thoroughly pulverized by rolling with a log every day. The pulverizing of the dirt killed the bugs and also prevented the live ones from crawling out of the furrow. Every morning the furrows were found to be full of dead bugs. The work at this farm has been discontinued this week, for most of the bugs are gone and the danger seems over.
Other farmers have also been at work, and other methods have been used. Some advocate that the only means of eradicating them is to stop the raising of wheat or oats for a few years.”
