No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 221 



The window gardens of our great grandmothers were the fore- 

 runners of our modern up-to-date steam heated greenhouses of to- 

 day, and woman was the first to assume the care of plants and 

 flowers in an artificial way. They would take up in good time the 

 sensitive exotic, and tenderly care for it long before the chilly north- 

 west wind swept o'er the snow clad hills and breathed the frozen 

 tokens of nature's enforced rest. 



The rapid development of flori-culture as a profession is largely 

 due to an organization known as the Society of American Florists, 

 and to the trade journals which as a consequence followed in its 

 wake. The S. A. F. meets in convention in a different city in the 

 month of August for three or four days every year, and papers ap- 

 pertaining to floriculture and discussions thereupon form the greater 

 part of the proceedings. It was organized in the year 1884, for the 

 purpose of developing commercial flori-culture and bettering the con- 

 dition of florists, as the Farmers' Institutes, State Boards of Agri- 

 culture and U. S. Department of Agriculture, and kindred organ- 

 izations were originated for the purpose of benefiting the farmer 

 and improving agriculture. 



Farmers and florists have some things in common. The results 

 of their labor and skill are the products of food for plants. Phos- 

 phoric acid, potash and nitrogen are just as necessary and essen- 

 tial to produce a crop of flowers as they are to produce farm crops. 

 The farmer has an advantage over the florist to a great extent. 

 Special fertilizers are prepared for him for the various crops he 

 grows; whereas, the florist is largely in the dark in this respect at 

 the present time. Much money is annually wasted by florists, I 

 am sure, in the purchase of fertilizers. Bone is one of the most 

 popular fertilizers with them, and its chief ingredient is phosphoric 

 acid, but whether it is as essential as a plant food to the production 

 of flowers as it would be where a crop of seed, as corn, or wheat, or 

 any other similar crop, where grain is the object in view, is a prob- 

 lem not yet solved. Potash, as used by the florist, is furnished 

 through wood ashes principally, and the bulk of the nitrogen comes 

 from farmyard manure, that from the cow stable at the present the 

 most preferable. Nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia have to 

 be used with great caution, for so much damage has been done 

 to crops in the past under glass through the indiscriminate use of 

 these salts that in many establishments the use of them has been 

 abandoned entirely. This state of affairs has been brought about 

 largely through the erroneous idea that because a small quantity of 

 the essential plant foods should prove beneficial, a larger quantity 

 ought to prove more so. 

 The Florists' Hall Association is an offshoot of the parent society. 



