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The Weekly Florists' Review ♦ 



NOVEMBER 2, 1899. 



Herbaceous Plants, 



This is an excellent time to trans- 

 plant or start a bed of herbaceous 

 plants. Few ot them but what lift and 

 divide now with perfect ease and safe- 

 ly: Paeonias, phlox, delphiniums, he- 

 lianthus or any of the useful genera. 

 Pyrethrums are an exception; they are 

 better left undisturbed and propagated 

 from the young growths in May, grown 

 in pots during summer and planted out 

 in September. They are the most use- 

 ful hardy border plant we have, their 

 fiowers selling in the spring as well as 

 carnations. With all herbaceous plants 

 you can't very well overdo it with deep 

 soil and manure. And don't crowd 

 them for room; any of them should be 

 far enough apart between the rows so 

 that in spring you can run the horse 

 cultivator between them. 



The crowns of nearly all these plants 

 are on, or a little above, the surface, 

 but when planting you should put them 

 two inches beneath the surface. The 

 frosts of winter will bring the roots 

 up, and even higher than you wish. 

 Two or three inches of stable litter 

 over the surface will be of benefit, not 

 so much as manure but to keep the 

 surface from continually freezing and 

 thawing. 



Crimson Rambler Roses. 



The Rambler roses that have been 

 grown in pots all summer and are 

 wanted to flower at Easter should not 

 be laid on their sides and allowed to 

 get rather dry. If kept up and we get 

 warm spells and rains they will not 

 ripen their wood, but they must not 

 be allowed to shrivel from dryness; 

 ;mil there is no better place for them 

 than outside where they should be till 

 danger of extremely cold weather, 

 when they can be laid on their side in 

 a cold frame. 



Some growers prefer to force the 

 plants that are lifted from the open 

 ground. These have Hie strongest 

 canes, but can hardly be in as good 

 shape for forcing as the pot grown 

 plants. Let a good sharp frost ripen 

 tin- wood before you lift them, and 

 when potting shorten back the shoots. 

 Quantity of flowers is what you want, 

 so you must nut cut them too far 

 back, but a third of the length of the 

 cane should at least be cut off. Pot 

 solidly and place in a cold-frame after 

 a thorough watering. 



You need not tie the canes to any 

 stakes till you bring them in to the 



greenhouse, or they would take up too 

 much room. Neither is it any benefit 

 to these plants after potting to be ex- 

 posed to a hard frost; a little won't 

 hurt, but too much in their crippled 

 state is not good. From the experi- 

 ence of others,, and my own, I found 

 that the Crimson Rambler when lifted 

 and forced the same winter takes a 

 long while to come into flower. They 

 must be started slowly and for the 

 first month given little heat, so thir- 

 teen or fourteen weeks in the green- 

 house is not too much to do them well. 



Deutzias. 



Last year a hard-working son put a 

 lot of deutzias and Azalea mollis in a 

 frame with their tops fully exposed to 

 the wintry blast, and a zero one came 

 along end of November and much in- 

 jured the tops, and that meant ruin to 

 them. The answer to the complaint 

 was, "They are hardy." That's true if 

 grown naturally, quite hardy, but not 

 when they have been two or three 

 weeks in the hold of a vessel where 

 the temperature was perhaps 70 de- 

 grees. They are quite tender then. 

 They need not be potted at once, and 

 to put them in the greenhouse would 

 be absurd. Put them in deep boxes 

 with some soil around the roots and 

 cover with glass in a frame. And 

 newly imported lilacs want the same 

 treatment. You can always bring in a 

 box with a dozen plants, but if in the 

 ground it may freeze hard. 



Boston Fern. 



We find an ever increasing use and 

 demand for the Boston fern (N. E. B.). 

 It is the easiest possible plant to in- 

 crease, and it has proved itself one of 

 the best house plants ever introduced. 

 In baskets, window boxes, pots or 

 pans, in a store window or a well kept 

 conservatory, it's all the same to the 

 "Boston brake." We did not lift all 

 our bench plants at once for want of 

 room, but as we lift and pot there are 

 any amount of young plants from the 

 stolons and after adding some bone- 

 meal to the benches we replant the 

 young stuff. Nothing will pay you 

 better, for it is useful in the spring 

 as in the fall. If you want the bench 

 for some other purpose then pot every 

 hit of the young plants in 2 or 3-inch 

 pots. There is no size of this plant but 

 what is useful. 



Carnations. 



There is no excuse for not having 



your carnations all neatly tied by this 

 time. And after seeing a house of 

 Siot Is last week supported with the 

 .Model wire support no one can think 

 of any other support being equal to it. 

 As once said before, and perhaps by 

 others, it's about perfect, and some 

 ether wire designs are very completely 

 imperfect. 



Carnations when doing well rot very 

 near the surface and before winter sets 

 in they should get a slight stirring. A 

 perfect weeding and then a good sprin- 

 kle of bone-meal and then half an 

 inch of sifted decayed manure, and 

 that will do them till next April. 



When watering don't let the hose 

 run at a 35-lb. pressure or you will 

 wash the mulching in every direction 

 and make the surface baked. Let the 

 watering be done through a flat but 

 coarse rose attached to end of hose, or 

 some other means by which the water 

 will fall on the surface without pack- 

 ing it down. And wet the foliage as 

 little as possible. Possibly the disap- 

 pearance of the rust has been greatly 

 assisted by the discontinuance of the 

 spraying which a dozen years ago was 

 thought so essential to carnations. 



WM. SCOTT. 



A VARIEGATED CANNA. 



A canna with handsomely variegated 

 foliage, very dwarf in habit, and with 

 flowers very similar to those of Flor- 

 ence Vaughan, and fully equal iu size, 

 is a novelty over which Manager A. 

 Mitting, of the Morris Floral Com- 

 pany, Morris, 111., is naturally very 

 jubilant. The variegation is yellow 

 and green, the marking very similar 

 to that of the leaves of Phrynium 

 variegatum. The seedling plant has 

 just bloomed and the flowers have 

 proved to be all that could be desired. 



Other interesting novelties to be 

 seen at the establishment of the Mor- 

 ris Floral Company are the new 

 golden foliaged geranium DeRoo Mit- 

 ting, which has double scarlet flowers; 

 the "Yellow Baby Primrose," which 

 makes an excellent companion to the 

 pink one: and the Double Snow Drop 

 geranium, with double flowers of the 

 purest white. 



The present establishment of the 

 company, which was built about two 

 years ago, consists of 20,000 feet of 

 glass most conveniently arranged and 

 devoted almost wholly to the shipping 

 trade. Mr. Mitting, the manager, 

 holds that, contrary to general belief, 

 there is some money in small plants 

 even at the low prices now made, but 

 the stock must be managed right. He 

 calculates to empty his houses com- 

 pletely six times during the year. 



H? carries a great variety of stock 

 and has many of his stock plants 

 planted out on the benches, finding 

 that they produce cuttings more rapid- 

 ly and freely than plants in pots. He 

 finds there is a good demand for any 

 plant of use to the florist and notes an 

 especially good call at present for 

 named geraniums, mainly double flow- 

 ered sorts, pelargoniums, hydrangeas 



