The Weekly Florists' Review* 



125 



Althaea Meebanii. 



contend with. Says they may yef ap- 

 pear, but that he won't worry till they 

 do. 



They have now purchased the big 

 Mitchell greenhouse (which they had 

 at first leased), together with a lot 

 of land 000 feet square, and are thor- 

 oughly remodeling the house. This 

 house is 50xt)tK» feet and I'J feet high 

 at the ridge and was first used for 

 vegetables and later for roses. All 

 the timber supports have been taken 

 out and iron pipe substituted. Ven- 

 tilators have been added at both back 

 and front, and new heating arrange 

 ments supplied. Benches with tile 

 bottoms are being put in and there 

 will be seven of these, each about five 

 feet wide. The benches will carry 

 six inches of soil and the house will 

 be devoted entirely to carnations. They 

 will have 30,000 plants this year ,a few 

 Daybreak and Scott, but mostly the 

 newer and fancy sorts, including Jubi- 

 lee, Mrs. Bradt, Triumph. Gold Nug- 

 get, Pingree. Flora Hill, Mary Wood. 

 Dazzle, White Cloud, Evelina and oth- 

 er new sorts. With them Mrs. Bradt 

 paid big returns last year. From 500 

 plants they cut from .50 to 1.50 flowers 

 a day and they all sold quick at from 

 |5 to $10 per 100, the average being 

 nearer the higher price. In their new 

 carnation house a bench of Jubilee is 

 already planted. "It's a good carna- 

 tion," said Mr. Bassett. "but we are 

 ready for one of similar color and 



stem without its faults. We would 

 like one that is a better producer and 

 that is not so subject to rust." In one 

 2(K;)-foot bench he is going to plant a 

 lot of varieties together, one or two 

 hundred of each and note results. Last 

 year they grew 2(K) Jubilee in the 

 field during the summer, but they 

 didn't amount to anything. If 

 grown at all they must be grown 

 under a glass aill summer, is 

 their experience. Their plants of 

 Flora Hill have not done very well in 

 the field. They have lost about 20 

 per cent of the plants from stem rot. 

 Think the plants may have been plant- 

 ed out too early and that the cold 

 may have brought about a check that 

 induced the disease, and that some of 

 the plants may have been set too deep 

 in the soil when planting. Recent 

 heavy rains have flooded a part of 

 their carnation field. 



Of chrysanthemums they will grow 

 about 25.(i<H) this season. Their lead- 

 ing varieties are Ivory, Whilldin, Rob- 

 inson, Mrs. 0. P. Bassett. Bonnaffon. 

 Jerome Jones. Domination. M. M 

 Johnson, Dailledouze, Kate Wash- 

 burn and Mrs. E. G. Hill, with a scat- 

 tering of other sorts. Jones is one of 

 their best. Ivory a standard and Dom- 

 ination still sells best of any. They 

 will aim to grow only moderate priced 

 flowers rather than special extra qual- 

 ity. They find that all rank growing 

 sorts do best in solid beds. From 



these beds they get finer flowers and 

 a bigger and stronger stem. 



They follow their mums with Harri- 

 sii, of which they will force 40,000 

 bulbs again this season. They have 

 had no appreciable loss from disease, 

 and less the past season than in pre- 

 vious years. After the Harrisii flow- 

 ers are marketed the houses are devot- 

 ed to young rose stock. The first lot 

 of Harrisii bulbs reaches them the lat- 

 ter part of July and the remainder in 

 August. All are potted up when re- 

 ceived and stood on the ground out- 

 side and covered with straw. They 

 are taken inside in batches to keep up 

 a succession of flowers. So large a 

 number of pots as 40,000, varying in 

 size from 4-inch to 0-inch, naturally 

 takes up a good deal of room and there 

 is some crowding at times, and con- 

 siderable moving around of the plants 

 is necessary to bring the crops in as 

 wanted. They aim to have the flow- 

 ers from about a third of the bulbs 

 marketed by Christmas. 



They have loO.tKMi valley now in cold 

 storage, but made nothing on valley 

 last year. The price of valley now 

 rarely averages over $3 a hundred 

 and freight and cold storage makes 

 the total cost of the pips close to $15 

 a thousand. Then deducting the pip.s 

 that fail there is nothing in it at .$3 

 a hundred spikes of bloom. Still they 

 must have valley for their trade. 



In other bulb stuff they will this sea- 

 son force .5ii.0(Xi tulips and 30,000 Von 

 Sion. 



They use galvanized iron rods for 

 staking and have about seven tons 

 of these in use on the place. 

 W. N. Rudd's. 

 At Mt. Greenwood. W. N. Rudd's 

 chrysanthemums are well advanced. 

 In a bench of Mrs. Jerome Jones the 

 plants will average two feet in height, 

 and there is a lot of Ivory that will 

 average a foot high. In white sorts 

 he is growing this season Midge, Mrs. 

 Geo. S. Kalb, Ivory. Pink Ivory (which 

 with him comes white, and the plants 

 are taller and the blooms larger than 

 the original Ivory). Souv. de Petite 

 Ami, Mayflower and Mrs. Jerome 

 Jones. In Yellows he is growing Yel- 

 low Queen, Harry Hurrell, Bonnaffon 

 (the banner yellow), Modesto (large- 

 ly), Dailledouze, and his yellow sport 

 from Mayflower. In pinks he has 

 Murdock. Morel and Perrin, but is still 

 looking for the ideal pink. He grows 

 only a few reds, all Defender and 

 Childs. He has a lot of his bronze 

 variety, Mrs. Arthur Caton. and won't 

 allow it to take a back seat, whatever 

 the critics may say. He has a few of 

 the new varieties on trial. 



In Carnations, Jubilee is again his 

 leading variety. Other sorts in quan- 

 tity are Pingree, Flora Hill and Mrs. 

 McBurney, these three being in about 

 equal quantity. He was so favorably 

 impressed with Cerise Queen that he 

 will bench 1,000 plants of it. Jubilee 

 and Pingree were last year his most 

 profitable sorts. He holds that a car- 

 nation must have stem or there is no 



