APHIS is the common plant louse. Some use tobacco stems as a mulch about Asters instead of manure. Tobacco factories and dealers in florist's supplies sell these at low prices, as it is the refuse material left after manufacturing tobacco for smoking and chewing. Where these can be obtained it is a sure preventative not only against aphis but almost any other insect.
Other remedies for aphis are spraying with a hard stream of water. Two or three thorough applications will finish them. Kerosene emulsion will kill them. So will insect powder if it has not become stale, and if used on a still, calm day when there is no air stirring to revive its suffocated victims.
THE BLISTER BEETLE or aster beetle comes along when the plants are in bloom or in bud. They are half to three-quarters of an inch long, black with grey stripes down their back. Oh! how they devour all before them! Out of the unknown they come, hordes of them. They tarry but two or three days, and leave but bare stalks behind them, every bed, every flower, and every leaf eaten off.
When the lytta, _alias_ blister beetle, arrives, prepare to give a warm welcome to him and all of his kind. There are several methods of doing this. Any of them must be repeated two or three times a day, for there seem to be successive waves of the beetles. In a few days the danger is past.
My own method is to get a helper, and, taking one plant at a time, knock the beetles off and kill them with a stick. It is a joy to look upon the heaps of slain when all is done. Whenever the plant upon which it is is jarred in the slightest, this beetle falls to the ground exactly as though it were dead. Only for a second, however, then it runs for dear life. That is why it takes more than one person, for it's no child's play to kill a score of scampering bugs in a quarter of a minute.
My other half's way is to get a fresh supply of insect powder (Dalmation, Persian, Bubach, etc., whatever name it may be sold under) and squirt it thickly over the bugs by the use of one of those 10-cent powder guns that all druggists keep. It is effective if the insect powder is fresh.
Other remedies are to put netting over the bed; to spray the plants with poisoned water, made by stirring 1 teaspoonful of Paris green into 2 gallons of water; and to use kerosene emulsion. The last is made after this formula: 1 tablespoonful of kerosene beaten up with half a cupful of milk. Dilute with 2 gallons of water.