# How to Protect Seedlings from the Flea Beetle

- URL: https://syn.by/en/history/archives/protect-seedlings-flea-beetle/
- Published: 1924-06-13T17:20:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-10T01:36:01+00:00
- Section: Archives
- Language: en
- BE edition: https://syn.by/historya/arkhivy/jak-ubierahchy-rassadu-ad-moshki.md
- RU edition: https://syn.by/ru/istoriya/arhivy/uberech-rassadu-ot-moshki.md

> Advice on protecting plants from the cabbage flea beetle: dust the wet seedlings in the morning with ashes mixed with tobacco, water them with cold water, and set the seedbeds high above the ground.

![](https://syn.by/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/illustration-1299-1024x585.webp)

Peasants usually call small black or speckled beetles, a little larger than a flea, "cabbage midges" (mośka). Like a flea, they do not run but jump (the cabbage midge is also called the earth flea). This pest eats up young plants of cabbage, turnip, radish and swede (bruchka). Often it eats these plants up completely and in this way destroys the whole seedling crop. The pest appears only toward the end of spring (in the month of May); at the beginning of summer it disappears again until spring.

To protect against it, the plants are dusted with ashes in the morning, while they are still wet with dew. One must take care that the ashes stick to the underside of the leaves of the little plants. If ashes alone do not drive the pest off, the plants must be dusted once or twice more with ashes mixed with snuff tobacco. For a bucket of sifted ashes one should take a quarter of a pound of snuff tobacco.

The pest eats the leaves only once the sun has risen and warmed the air. For this reason, in order to protect the seedlings, they are watered with cold water just as the sun is rising. The pest flees from cold water.

To keep the pest out of the seedbed altogether, the seedbeds are built high above the ground on posts. A platform is laid on posts driven into the ground, soil is carried onto it, and the seedlings are sown there.