74 NKHUASKA STATE Iir»K'IMCr[/l'(nAL SOCIETV 



must be watered all the time, especially when the plants have four or 

 five inch pots. 



There was a new one that came out four or five years ago, the Mala- 

 coides. It is a beautiful plant and is good for advertising work, on ac- 

 count of the long sprouts and graceful flowers. You can have five or 

 six inch pots for the following winter. They require a dry, cool atmo- 

 sphere. 



Next I will take the begonias, and just mention a couple of types 

 that are grown as winter blooming varieties). One 1 prefer above all 

 others is the Cincinnatis. While this is a newer variety, the flowery are 

 so much larger than the old type that there is hardly any comparison, and 

 it will hold its flowers. You vv'ill probably all Icnow that every one of 

 the old kind that was sold dropped its flov/ers about the second day it left 

 the store. The Cincinnatis will hold its flowers for a week, and I have 

 had Cincinnatis in the greenhouse for four or five weeks, in a salable 

 condition. It will hold its flowers in the greenhouse, and is a much 

 easier variety to grow. It is propagated from leaf sprouts. It should 

 be done from this time up to April and May, and you will get good plants 

 for the following winter. Take a medium-sized leaf and insert it in the 

 sands and keep the leaf from touching the sand, and about five or six 

 weeks after putting them in the sand they wiii root, and a good many of 

 them will begin to show growth from the beds, and then they can be 

 potted up in a very light porous soil. All begonias won't stand water 

 around their feet, as the saying is. When a begonia becomes soggy or in 

 a soggy condition, the plant will soon become ready for the dump heap. 

 While these young plants will not make much growth in the summer, 

 yet in the fall of the year when the weather begins to get cool tho 

 plants will grow like weeds, and by the middle of December it will make 

 five or six inch plant for the holiday trade. 



There is another variety that is very cheap, — this Cincinnatis is too 

 high-priced to buy for many of us. Young plants in two inch pots for 

 summer delivery have cost |15 to $18 per hundred, and they probably 

 will, for some time to come. But the variety that has been on the mar- 

 ket for several years, and the old fancy type, the luminosa, of which I 

 had a few last summer and winter, there were only three or four that 

 varied from the ordinary. All the others were an even shape, and it was 

 an even good summer bloomer. All bego.iia plants are hard to take 

 care of, in the first stages of growth. The seed is so small that it will 

 stick to your finger, if you put your finger in a package they will stick 

 all over it. And while they are sown, if the pan or pot is not watered 

 carefully they will all wash in the lower places. Just sprinkle the seed 

 over the top and not cover it at all, and they will come up even. I 

 generally get them on the point of a lead pencil and just push them into 

 the soil, and after a month or two in the flats, after being transplanted, 

 they begin to grow very rapidly. This will make plants as large as you 

 want them for the following winter. If the flowers drop, the next crop 



