472 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



APRIL 6, 1899. 



Mars shows up splendidly as a scar- 

 let. Mr. Asmiis and the Dailledouze 

 brothers are joint owners of the stock 

 of this carnation. In crimsons he will 

 drop Meteor and will try Maceo and 

 Gomez. 



Girls are employed in the carnation 

 houses to disbud, tie up, etc. 



All his newer houses are of the iron 

 frame construction, seen at the place 

 of Dailledouze Bros, and already de- 

 scribed. 



Tobacco stems used through the 

 houses to keep out green fly are placed 

 in a square of wire netting and sus- 

 pended under the edge of the side 

 benches or other convenient place. 

 They do not decay as when laid on the 

 soil or the walks and are more effec- 



tive. Mr. Asmus noted this system at 

 Madison and at once adopted it. 



He still forces a few lilacs, but there 

 is little profit in it now. He made a 

 great deal of money forcing lilacs 

 years ago. One year he cut over $5,000 

 worth of bloom out of one house, but 

 prices were high then and he was the 

 only one in it. He bought up all the 

 old lilac bushes in the surrounding 

 country at nominal prices and forced 

 the blooms without difficulty, the flow- 

 ers coming white when forced into 

 bloom in winter. 



Valley has been a much more im- 

 portant crop with him in the past 

 than it is now. "It's overdone now," 

 he says. The same as to tulips. 



He has a force of 22 employes to 

 handle his 80,000 square feet of glass. 



Easter Plants. 



The Easter just past has been pre- 

 eminently a plant Easter. Every year 

 there is some loss or gain in popular- 

 ity, and different cities and localities 

 have different fancies. What we have 

 found to be getting a chestnut here 

 in Buffalo may still take well in small- 

 er towns, and what has had its day 

 in New York or Boston may yet be 

 largely a novelty with us. I have 

 made a memorandum, mental as well 

 as with the pen, of what went best 

 with us and as a guide for the Easter 

 of 1900. Lots of people are aware 

 what date Easter will fall on in the 

 year 2100, but we are not interested 

 in that, for few babies alive to-day 

 will see it, and when they reach the 

 age of 101 they will be in an age when 

 they live, breathe, walk, talk, eat, 

 fight and perform all other functions 

 by electricity. Easter of 1900 is on 

 April 15, a much better time for many 

 of our flowering plants. 



The lily has not waned in popularity 

 one bit; it is fixed as the Easter plant. 

 I would not advise growing the Har- 

 risii for Easter. For the winter 

 months for cutting it is all right, 

 diseased as they are we must have 

 some, but the Bermuda longiflorum is 

 the one to grow, and a good few of 

 them should be three plants to an 

 8 or 9-inch pot. 



Azaleas sold well. Many a plant 

 that ordinarily would bring $3, with 

 the addition of crepe and 35 cents 

 worth of ribbon, brought $5. Beyond 

 the latter figure few are wanted unless 

 your customer wants to buy $5 worth 



of ribbon with the plant. Too large a 

 plant is not wanted. We found a great 

 demand for an azalea that we could 

 retail at about $1.25, and we did not 

 have them; remember this when you 

 order. You can buy in Belgium nice 

 little plants for 18 cents. We found 

 the best sale for Mme. Van der Cruys- 

 sen, Mme. C. V. Langenhove, Bern- 

 hard Andreas alba, Emperor de Brazil, 

 Edmund Vervaene, Empress of India, 

 Prof. Wolters (rather shy of buds), 

 Memoire de Louis Van Houtte, Charles 

 Pynaert, and old Flag of Truce. None 

 of these are expensive kinds, and 

 don't forget that you want a good lit- 

 tle plant to suit a moderate "wad." 



Spiraea (astilbe) Japonica is about 

 played out. The demand was very 

 light and you get too little out of it 

 for the room It occupies for some 

 weeks. It is the cheapest plant sold. 

 Then again, without sub-irrigation, a 

 saucer with an inch of water in it, it 

 is useless; it shrivels up and people 

 are tired of it. 



The Bottle Brush (metrosideros) is 

 very attractive if well flowered, but 

 you only want one to every dozen 

 azaleas and the same lukewarm com- 

 mendation can be given Acacia armata 

 and Drummondii. I will never at- 

 tempt to grow another cineraria; 

 beautiful as they may be for the 

 adornment of a private conservatory, 

 they can only be grown at a profit by 

 the man who works his wife, mother- 

 in-law, children and aunts in the 

 greenhouse. The genista has always 

 been a good market plant where you 

 sell to people whom you never care to 

 see again, but in a warm room it is 



very unsatisfactory and a very limited 

 quantity will do. Well flowered pots 

 of violets sold well, and so did 5 and 

 6-inch pots of lily of the valley; 18 

 flowers in a G-inch pot went rapidly. 



Eight and 9-inch pans of Murillo 

 tulips sold readily. It is the unequaled 

 tulip for this purpose, standing erect 

 with its breadth of four inches and 

 lovely shade of pink. There is al- 

 ways (and always will be) a sale for a 

 good Dutch hyacinth, but they must 

 be good. They are a 25-cent plant, 

 and there are lots of 25-eent people; 

 S and 10-inch pans of Dutch hyacinths, 

 all of some fine variety, sold fairly 

 well, but customers for them at $2 and 

 $3 each don't crowd your store at one 

 time. Small pans of daffodils with a 

 dozen or fifteen open flowers took the 

 fancy of many. 



Crimson Rambler roses, well fiow- 

 ered, with a ribbon or two to match 

 the color, was in far greater demand 

 than the supply. There is a plant, a 

 leader in the largest cities, that you 

 must all grow. Excuse an interpola- 

 tion. In the Am. Floiist of last week, 

 in an article on Easter outlook for 

 plants from their New York corre- 

 spondent, appfears something like the 

 following in relation to this grand 

 rose: "Some advocate growing it the 

 previous summer in pots, and many 

 depend on plants lifted from the 

 ground in the fall; the largest growers 

 prefer the latter method." I am out 

 for information. Is this a fact? I 

 should have said that summer growth 

 in pots, given under glass until July 

 and then well ripened during the fall 

 months in the open air would give 

 much better results than plants lifted 

 from the nursery in November. If, 

 however, the New York correspondent 

 meant whit he said we want to make 

 sure of it, for what the largest and 

 best growers do must be right, and we 

 are willing to learn to our last day. 



There was little or no good migno- 

 nette ofl:ered in pots; 5 and 6-inch pots 

 of this with half a dozen good spikes 

 sold faster than you could hand them 

 out, and the handing out soon stopped 

 for there was no more to hand. But 

 grow it and let it be a leading article. 

 That sort of stuff is much better than 

 importing plants with the attendant 

 expenses. Lilacs sold well, and as 

 they take but a short time under glass, 

 are profitable. The common Deutzia 

 gracilis is very cheap to buy, very 

 white and feathery and sold well, and 

 is easily six times as profitable as a 

 spiraea. Well flowered daisies (Chry- 

 santhemum frutescens) sold on sight 

 for a church plant. It is a very ef- 

 fective plant for decorations; the 

 white is the favorite. 



There were very few well grown 

 hybrid perpetual roses, and everybody 

 wanted one. You should have roses 

 in pots with half a dozen fiowers. 

 Now is the time to prepare for them, 

 either by potting some strong plants, 

 cutting them low down and getting 

 four or five good shoots to grow on 

 during summer, or planting them out 

 on your own place so that you can lift 



