1902. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review^ 



663 



MISCELLANEOUS 

 SEASONABLE HINTS. 



After Easter. 



A wonderful change comes over our 

 houses as soon as Easter is over, not so 

 much with the exclusive rose and carna- 

 tion man as with the Easter plant grower, 

 for now his houses are emptied, or should 

 oe, of his lilies, azaleas, acacias, rhodo- 

 dendrons, pot roses, genistas and spiraea 

 and many other plants that have filled his 

 benches for months, made his houses beau- 

 tiful to look at and produced dreams 

 wherein the dollar was floating all around. 



You soon get straightened out. Your 

 left-overs compactly occupying but a 

 small space, I hope, and a large expanse 

 of good bench room with the pleasant oc- 

 cupation of shifting, potting and spread- 

 ing out your spring bedding and decorat- 

 ive stock. It is to the plant man a great 

 advantage when Easter is as early in the 

 season as that just passed, because there 

 is plenty of time to shift again on before 

 selling time our most important crops. 



Geraniums. 



The zonal geranium is decidedly with us 

 the most important bedding plant. There 

 is nothing new to be said about them, 

 but get them shifted into the selling pot 

 at once. Most of ours are the fall struck 

 plants, are now in 3-inch pots, have been 

 pinched and need no more ' ' stopping. ' ' 

 A 4-inch pot is the largest pot you can 

 afford to give a bedding geranium, even 

 if you do get the decent price of $1.50 per 

 dozen. Don't use a rich soil with either 

 much old manure or leaf mould ; a rather 



heav}', fresh loam witli a fifth or sixth of 

 well rotted manure will do, and if you are 

 minus the right kind of manure then add 

 to the loam a .^-inch pot of bone flour 

 to one ordinary wheelbarrow load of soil. 

 1 have many times impressed on my read- 

 ers the value of potting firmly. Don 't 

 put the ball down in the bottom of the 

 new pot and pile some soil on top and be- 

 gin thumbing, for that is no way to get 

 the soil firmly and evenly around the old 

 ball. Hold the plant up till you get the 

 earth well around the ball and then it 

 goes down like a wedge. I can hear some 

 say, ' ' A geranium will grow however you 

 handle it." It is a most accommodating 

 plant, but there is a right and a wrong 

 way to shift a plant, and this applies not 

 only to geraniums but to all our green- 

 house plants. 



The zonal, by far the most important 

 class of geraniums, we always keep in- 

 side on the lightest benches, plenty of 

 ventilation, and if they are never shaded 

 till selling time so much the better, and 

 if you can afford time to plunge them 

 in spent hops early in May you need never 

 shade. The variegated and bronze, as 

 well as the scented varieties, we put into 

 a mild hotbed, but not till middle or end 

 of April. Cuttings that were taken off 

 the fall struck zonals about the first of 

 February, are now nicely rooted in 2 and 

 2%-inch pots. They are liable to get 

 stunted if they remain in those pots long 

 during bright weather, so shift into 3 and 

 3 1/2 -inch pots as soon as possible. 



Cannas. 



Our next most important spring plant 

 is the eanna. Those we started a few 

 weeks ago in flats or on the benches in an 

 inch or two of sphagnum moss. They 

 have made a growth of a few inches and 

 sent out lots of roots. As soon as possi- 

 ble put them into pots, the strong grow; 

 ing kinds in 5-ineh and the others in 

 4-ineh. Cannas will enjoy the richest 

 soil. The house should not go below 50 

 degrees at any time, but it should be light 

 and bright. You want a canna to be 

 stout and sturdy and then it will not 

 feel the sun and wind. But you too 

 otten, when buying, get warm grown, 

 Orawn-up stuff that is miserable to look 

 at till the new growth starts. 



Buy a few of the best cannas for plant- 

 ing out for your stock. Tarrytown I 

 consider unequaled as a grand scarlet; 

 Pierson's Premier, a grand dwarf variety 

 of the Queen Charlotte type, but much 

 better; Mrs. Kate Gray, a very tall vari- 

 ety with immense orange flowers and lux- 

 urious tropical foliage; Buttercup is a 

 beautiful pure yellow; McKinley, a fine 

 medium height scarlet ; Black Beauty is 

 in a class by itself as a dwarf foliaged 

 sort. The dwarf Florence Vaughan, as 

 well as the older type, is indispensable, 

 and one of .the greatest of all cannas is 

 Victory, a wonderfully free and beautiful 

 orange ; David Harum, I think, is the best 

 of its class, a fine bronze leaf with an 

 orange-scarlet flower. There are many 

 other fine varieties but they are better 

 known. 



Caladiums. 



C'aladium esculentum, as soon as you 

 have room, should also be taken from the 

 flats of sand and put into 5-inch pots. 

 A light house is also necessary for these 

 or you will get a soft, long leaf that will 

 break to pieces the first wind that occurs 

 after being planted out. 



View in Store of Robert Crawford, Jr., Philadelphia, at Easter. 



