82 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



giving if desired, but the new year will scarcely have been ushered in until 

 you will begin to hear from your customers' demands for signs of spring, 

 such as tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths some ten weeks before you are 

 apt to hear that first real sign of spring, the robin's song. 



We have now come to the critical time in forcing bulbs. Six or eight 

 weeks later it will be an easy matter, but we have brought in a few boxes 

 of tulips and daffodils, and a few pots of hyacinths. And where did you 

 put them? Beneath a cool carnation bench? That may be all right, but 

 I prefer, if possible, to place them beneath a bench in a warm rose house, 

 under which there is no heat, for these first boxes of bulbs for the first 

 two or three weeks, will grow but little even here; and if we are to 

 have stems of sufficient length to make them salable, we must get them 

 into a temperature which does not fall much short of 75 degrees the 

 entire twenty-four hours or we shall have failure, or at least that has been 

 my experience. If you do not have a small house where you can main- 

 iain such a temperature, enclose the end of some warm convenient 

 bench where you have a good bottom heat, make the bench about 

 eighteen inches deep and cover over with glass, and clean all sand and 

 lath from the bench and enclose so you will have a good bottom heat. 

 Put a thermometer in the box and if you are firing steady and your box 

 is enclosed tight, it will stand close to 90 degrees. Put plenty of moss 

 in the bottom of your box and set your boxes of bulbs in, and have 

 cracks between the glass so that you can maintain a temperature of 

 about 75 degrees. Give two good April showers each day, but do not soak 

 unless necessary. Shade over the glass with papers for the first week, 

 or until the plants are well drawn up, then remove the papers at night. 



I have found this to be a good process for a florist who only forces 

 a few boxes at a time. It is also well to keep about three weeks' supply 

 of bulbs under the bench at all times, bringing in a few each week, which 

 will give us a continuous crop. It is always the first boxes of tulips 

 and daffodils that give us the most anxiety, and we often become anxious 

 and bring in a few of these bulbs along in December and no matter 

 how we treat them they fail to respond fully garbed, and finally some 

 morning we find an open flower without a handle and without a coat 

 which looks up at us and seems to say, "Why did you disturb me at 

 this season of the year, when everything is fast asleep. I should like 

 to have tarried just a little longer in my quiet solitude, hut if you must 

 have me, here I am." And we take off our cap and from our pocket our 

 knife, and cut off their dainty heads, and say, "You will do for a design." 



It is hardly advisable to bring in tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths 

 before the first of January or first of February. As to varieties of tulips 

 they are many and varied, not two growers using the same varieties, 

 but there is none in white which forces more easily than the La Reine; 

 Princess Helena also forces easily but the bulbs are more expensive. In 

 yellow there is none better than Men Tresor for early forcing; Yellow 

 Prince is also good; in pink. Cottage Maid is good and they are cheap. 



