MAR<JH 23, 181-9. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review. 



399 



Preparations for Easter. 



A very dull, cloudy, changeable 

 month this has been so far and those 

 who looked for bright weather to hast- 

 en their tardy crops have been disap- 

 pointed. There are always some 

 hatches early enough but I think on 

 the whole our principal Easter plants 

 are rather backward. A good deal of 

 maneuvering has to be done both to 

 get room till the Easter congestion is 

 over and to push some late crops or 

 hold others in good condition that are 

 a week too early. There will be a 

 week after you see these lines till the 

 crops are marketed, yet a few hints 

 may be useful to some beginners. 



If lilies are well out they will keep 

 a week and longer in any cool cellar 

 or basement where there is little light 

 just as well as they will under glass. 

 If they are what you think is just 

 right and you have been forcing pret- 

 ty hard, don't move them out of the 

 warm house to a cooler until there are 

 at least two flowers open, for they al- 

 most stand still when given a drop of 

 15 degrees. 



Last year we had a fine lot of aza- 

 leas, pricipally Van der Cruyssen and 

 Prof. Wolters, that were fully out two 

 weeks before Easter. They were more 

 than ten days in a cool light basement 

 and kept in perfect order. This year 

 there is no need of such treatment. 

 The bulk of the azaleas are in to a day, 

 while a few varieties like Emperor de 

 Brazil, perhaps backward, will open 

 quickly in a warm house. There is no 

 harm or fraud in forcing out an aza- 

 lea and it does not impair its future 

 welfare. 



For the first time in my recollection 

 the cytisus, or as many call it the 

 genista, needs a good warm heat; give 

 it to them if there is any hope at all. 

 Acacia armata has come along about 

 right in a cool house, but if the win- 

 ter had been an ordinary one it is 

 hard work to keep them back. Their 

 pretty little globular flower is easily 

 spoilt and you must keep water away 

 from them entirely, although the roots 

 want a copious supply. This beautiful 

 plant will not force; we have tried it. 

 It must come along slowly in a cool 

 house; I mean by that not over 50 de- 

 grees at night. 



Lilac if too early will keep in a 

 cool dry cellar for ten days and actual- 



ly seem all the better for it. With us 

 the Spiraea japonica (astilbe) is de- 

 cidedly late, or rather there has been 

 the need of higli pressure forcing. If 

 stood in S-inch pans and the pans kept 

 filled with strong liquid manure it will 

 help it very much. This plant is 

 roughly treated; you crowd a clump 

 of roots into a pot about filling the 

 pot, so it needs water; water all the 

 time. I hope you put your rhododen- 

 drons in your warmest house and sy- 

 ringed them three times a day. If so, 

 you have them in flower. When well 

 out they last a long time in a cool 

 house. 



I have had some good natured criti- 

 cism from my neighbors on the length 

 of time I gave for the opening of tu- 

 lips, narcissus and hyacinths in a late 

 number. I feel sure from my own ex- 

 perience I was right. It is March we 

 are growing them in, not April, as it 

 often is. It is sunshine that hurries 

 out these spring bulbs and if a day or 

 two too early keep the sun off of them. 

 You have noticed that a tulip flower, 

 when it has reached full development, 

 opens widely every day that the sun 

 shines on them and closes again at 

 night. This they will do for four or 

 five days and then this ceases and 

 they remain in a sort of cup-shaped 

 form; that is the beginning of the 

 end. So, if early, place them under a 

 bench in a cool house where the in- 

 fluence of the sun will not be felt and 

 they will remain many days in good 

 condition. Hyacinths, as we all know 

 well, keep several days in a cool cel- 

 lar after being out. I have been sup- 

 posing that you may have to resort to 

 these methods. I trust not, and that 

 all your crops have hit the date to a 

 dot. 



Make a note that when you want 

 Crimson Rambler, or any of the Ram- 

 blers in good bloom by the first of 

 April, that twelve weeks in the green- 

 house is none too much to allow them; 

 14 weeks is much better. You cannot 

 force these roses beyond a certain lim- 

 it and the first six weeks of their time 

 indoors must certainly be a cool time, 

 so I find that fourteen weeks is not 

 too much for them. This would be a 

 bad time to neglect fumigating and a 

 few days before Easter would be a 

 poor time to be compelled to "smoke," 

 so the earliest days of the week get 

 rid of aphis that your customers may 



not say the plant you sent them was 

 "covered with lice," for that is usually 

 the comprehensive and emphatic lan- 

 guage of the complaint. 



This is a good time to start Cala- 

 dium esculentum, the elephant's ears, 

 for which we find so much use. There 

 is always a useless piece of the tuber 

 that can be cut off; the roots start 

 from near the crown. We put them in 

 flats three inches deep, in fact, tulip 

 flats, in a mixture of sand and rotted 

 manure. You can put the bulbs near- 

 ly touching and place the flats on the 

 pipes. They occupy no valuable room 

 and start at once, and after Easter 

 you will have time and room to put 

 them in 5-inch pots. The cannas that 

 were so treated two weeks ago are up 

 and six inches high, and won't be in- 

 jured by remaining another week or 

 so in flats, but take them off the pipes 

 before they get drawn. You will not 

 have bench room to spare until after 

 the big flower festival, but it is a good 

 time to put in all cuttings of all those 

 plants which have to be of some size 

 when your customers want them, such 

 as salvias, heliotropes, lemon verbenas, 

 etc. WILLIAM SCOTT. 



ASPARAGUS SPRENGERII. 

 F. C. C. asks: "Will you please tell 

 us in The Review how to manage our 

 Asparagus Sprengerii? We have it 

 now in S-inch pots and the bulbs form- 

 ing at the bottom lift the ball up so it 

 is a half-inch at least above the rim, 

 making it difficult to water. We have 

 kept shifting the plants as they need- 

 ed it, and they have acted in the same 

 way, after each potting." 



Our experience with this most useful 

 plant does not warrant us in saying 

 that you can divide it or in repotting 

 that you could cut off considerable of 

 the center roots because we have not 

 tried it, but it seems perfectly reason- 

 able that you could with safety; al- 

 though I believe that it is better for 

 the commercial man when the roots 

 have entirely filled an 8-inch pot and 

 the plants have crowded the pots to 

 the extent that the plant is exhausted 

 and the fronds are no longer a good 

 color, to discard them, and depend on 

 younger plants. Plants of not more 

 than two years' growth are more sat- 

 isfactory of A. plumosus and also of 

 smilax (closely allied to asparagus) 

 than older plants. We have seen hang- 

 ing baskets of A. Sprengerii that are a 

 mass of roots, throwing out grand 

 fronds and an occasional watering 

 with liquid manure will help it. One 

 pound of nitrate of soda in 40 gallons 

 of water will give it a fine color. 



While on the subject I may say that 

 hanging baskets are an expensive and 

 laborious way of growing Sprengerii 

 and a 6 or 8-inch pot on a bench does 

 not give it a fair chance to develop 

 its fine sprays. An excellent way to 

 grow it for cutting is to plant it in 

 long boxes; let the box be 10 inches 



