J 58 



The Weekly Florists^ Review. 



JANUARY 11. 1900. 



has been in vogue several years on 

 some of tbe best places in the east and 

 has proved eminently successful with 

 me. 



Always give cuttings a thorough 

 watering as soon as inserted, then 

 syringe lightly each bright day, 

 watching the sand carefully, and give 

 a thorough watering when it is again 

 needed, which will depend upon the 

 weather and other conditions. 



The pipes under the propagating 

 bench should be so arranged as to 

 afford a temperature of 6S to 70 de- 

 grees in the sand and an overhead tem- 

 perature of 55 degrees. 



Shading must be carefully looked 

 after and this can be readily done by 

 an inexpensive arrangement of cheese 

 cloth near the- glass which c-an be 

 raised or lowered to suit weather con- 

 ditions. Absolute cleanliness must be 

 observed about the cutting bench or 

 you will surely be troubled with fun- 

 gus. All leaves that may drop after the 

 cuttings have been in the sand awhile 

 must be picked off the saud, but there 

 will be few or none such if you are 

 cautious in selecting only healthy 

 wood and give proper care. A. O. T. 



Cannas. 



The popularity of the canna is by no 

 means on the wane or likely to be. 

 You should look over your dormant 

 roots and see that they are keeping 

 alright, plump and green but not grow- 

 ing. Under a rose or carnation bench 

 is the place if you have no special root 

 house, but if there is much drip from 

 the bench it will rot the tubers and if 

 they are on damp ground they will 

 start to grow, so both of these condi- 

 tions should be avoided. 



If you wish to sow seed of cannas do 

 so at once. You can buy seed of most 

 of the fine varieties and they come 

 largely true from seed. Soak the seed 

 in hot water for 24 hours and then 

 slice off a small piece of the hard cov- 

 ering of the seed and sow in 2 inches 

 of sand in a strong bottom heat. We 

 usually place an inch of soil in the 

 bottom of the flat and then one inch 

 of sand and put the seeds into the 

 sand half or three-cjuarters of an inch 

 and keep moist, placing the flats on 

 some hot water pipes. Your custom- 

 ers won't have cannas unless they are 1 

 good, strong plants and it takes all 

 their time from now till end of May 

 to produce a plant from the seed. There 

 is usually a scarcity of good yellow, so 

 sow plenty of the Florence Vaughan 

 type. 



Lobflias. 



Lobelias are best raised from cut- 

 tings from plants lifted in the fall, but 

 where that has not been thought of 

 and you depend on seed you should 

 sow as early as possible. It takes a 

 long time to make plants large enough 

 for our baskets and vases. As a bed- 

 ding plant the lobelia is no good to 

 us; its flowers disappear in .luly and 



August and leave cast iron green 

 where the beautiful blue is looked for. 



Smilax. 



We have done this year what we 

 tiught not to have done, and left un- 

 done those things which we ought to 

 have done, and the offense is more 

 grievous because we know better and 

 preach to the contrary. We left in a 

 bed of smilax last year instead of re- 

 planting in July. It looked tempting 

 to leave it in but it's a big mistake 

 and we get no such strings as from a 

 young bed. The profit of the bed de- 

 pends on the [juality and numlier of 

 strings you cut in a season, and early 

 in July a strong plant from a 3-inch 

 pot should be planted, and to obtain 

 that strong rooted plant which makes 

 a salable string from the first growth, 

 seed should be sown very soon. 



Seeds. 



A few other seeds that should be 

 sown now are gloxinia, if you wish to 

 raise your own bulbs: pansies, if you 

 don't have enough in the frames. 

 Pansies sown now and grown along 

 light and cool make excellent bedding 

 material. 



You never can be wrong in sowing 

 plenty of Asparagus plumosus and 

 Sprengeri. Plumosus has made the 

 finest of plants for the fern dishes, 

 outlasting any of the ferns, and there 

 is a great demand for small plants in 

 3 and 4-inch pots because the public 

 is aware of its being such a grand 

 house plant, withstanding the gas, heat 

 and gossip of the worst regulated 

 families. 



Centaurea gymnocarpa is little used 

 as a bedding plant now but it has its 

 uses and is free and hardy. They are 



always raised from seed and now is 

 the time to commence. Don't bother 

 with C. candidissima; it is too unreli- 

 able. 



It is. also an excellent time to sow 

 carnations, either your own saving or 

 any other ne plus ultra collections 

 "saved only from the finest varieties." 



A good many now depend on raising 

 verbenas from seed because these are 

 free from disease and grow freely. The 

 finest colors can now be depended on 

 from seedlings. Your patrons like to 

 see them in flower so by end of this 

 month sow the seed. 



For the great bulk of the so called 

 hardy annuals, stocks, asters, etc., it 

 is two months too early to begin. 

 Carnations. 



It is a most excellent time now to 

 put in your main lot of carnation cut- 

 tings. The conditions are just right; 

 cool houses with not enough sun to 

 need much shading, if any, and the 

 cuttings have not been forced to an 

 unnatural growth by artificial heat. 

 Every florist ought to know the best 

 kind of cuttings: neither the stout, 

 stubby growth of the bottom nor the 

 weak offshoot near the flower should 

 be propagated for yourself. Neither do 

 all varieties give you the same quan- 

 tity or quality of cuttings, but with all 

 varieties you can get some cuttings; 

 near the base of the flowering stem 

 you will get the ideal cuttings, and by 

 the time the flower is developed the 

 side growth will be stout and strong. 

 Those who propagate hundreds of 

 thousands of plants from a few thou- 

 sand cannot of course be so particular, 

 and sometimes you see all parts of 

 the plants are distributed, not forget- 

 ting sections of the stems and the 

 rust. 



Some professor very recently made 

 the statement that dipping the cut- 

 tings in any copper solution, either 

 when they went in the sand or when 

 they come out. was not advisable. I 

 have forgotten the exact words but he 

 frowned on the practice. With due re- 

 spect tor his research I shall continue 

 to do it and believe it has helped us 

 wonderfully in ridding our stock of the 

 rust; and I am positive it does not do 

 the young cuttings or plants the slight- 

 est harm. A dip for a moment in the 

 ammoniacal solution costs neither time 

 nor money and is a thorough bath, 

 which spraying is not. 



Twenty years ago carnations were 

 invariably put in the ordinary cutting 

 bed where the sand was about 65 to 70 

 degrees and the air 50 to 55 degrees 

 and we grew fine plants of carnations 

 in those days: b\it bottom heat is no 

 longer favored. It is not a necessity; 

 carnations will root without it, but if 

 I grew carnation cuttings for sale my 

 idea of a propagating bed would be 

 where the sand was 60 degrees and the 

 atmosphere was 50 degrees; that little 

 bottom heat will save ten days in the 

 time of rooting, and it woiild l>e absurd 

 to say that the plant was enervated 

 with that start. 



Geraniums. 



Our largest job just at present is 



