No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 297 



Other, giving the end towards the Northeast the diagonal form, but 

 for what reason is only known to the proprietors. This rose house 

 is devoted exclusively to the growing of one variety, and that is 

 the American Beauty, and in it there are 45,000 plants, and the pur- 

 pose for which ihey are grown is for cut flowers. Montgomery 

 County, 1 believe, produces more of the rose, American Beauty, for 

 cut fiowers than any other count}' in Pennsylvania. At the last 

 census, taken in 1900, there was nearly |9,000,000 invested in the 

 business of Floriculture. Only one state in the United States ex- 

 ceeds that amount, and that is the State of Nev\' York. 



The past summer for carnations was not the best in some districts 

 for producing large plants, manj- djing outright, consequently the 

 supply of cut carnations flowers last autumn was not so good as in 

 some former years, and prices ruled firm in consequence. Some 

 growers of carnations when preparing them for blooming in winter, 

 prefer to grow their plants in pots, from the time the cuttings are 

 rooted and taken from their propagating beds, until planted inside 

 the greenhouses especially prepared for the plants to bloom in dur- 

 ing winter season, whereas others grow them outdoors all summer, 

 and treat them similar to any other growing crop, as vegetables, by 

 hoeing to destroy weeds and to keep the soil loose and in proper con- 

 dition to conserve moisture and allow them to remain until just be- 

 fore frost may be expected, when they are transplanted to their 

 winter quarters. And again other growers give them what might 

 be termed the intermediate method, which means that the young 

 carnations are planted in the field or garden just as soon as severe 

 frost is over, and allow them to remain there until tlie first week in 

 July — some florists and gardeners prefer the month of August to 

 transplant them in to their winter quarters; there are really no 

 hard and fast lines that are strictly adhered to in resi>ect to the 

 time when plants are transferred from the garden to the green- 

 houses, but it is quite noticeable that each year Y/e find new con 

 verts to the early lifting from outside to inside and I would not be 

 at all surprised to find in a few years from now, that the indoor 

 treatment will be adopted altogether all over the country. Time 

 will not permit of me going any more elaborately into carnation 

 growing, but I thought it best to make some allusion here to 

 the different methods of carnation culture to show that this 

 branch of Floriculture has not been sufficiently systematized 

 and reduced to a science, as has been done in the cultiva- 

 tion of roses. One reason is that carnations are not so 

 exacting in their requirements as is the rose. They do not require 

 so much heat as roses do, and will do fairly well no matter which 

 of the different treatments are given to them. A night temperature 

 of 50 degrees is high enough for the generality of carnations, but 

 roses need 10 degrees higher at night — say 60 degrees. Before 

 leaving the subject of carnations, I Avill say that new and greatly im- 

 proved varieties are being produced and the end is not yet. More 

 rapid progress is being made. I believe, along the lines of improving 

 the varieties of carnations than there is in the roses. The varieties 

 of carnations that were at the heighth of their popularity twenty- 

 five years ago, have been discarded and are almost forgotten, where- 

 as some of the most satisfactory roses that are grown now, were, 

 also prown twenty to twenty-five years ago — American Beauty, for 

 instance. 

 20 



