906 



The Weekly Florists^ Review, 



May 23. 1902. 



MISCELLANEOUS 

 SEASONABLE HINTS. 



Summer Blooming Roses. 



Altliougli somenliat late for a remind- 

 er — jet early euoiigh as the weather has 

 been — it will be found very useful and 

 profitable to have some good beds of true 

 summer blooming roses. By that I mean 

 some teas that bloom freely out of doorS 

 in summer time and several of the hy- 

 brid teas. The hybrid perpetuals are 

 really not much use to the florist, beau- 

 tiful and grand as they are, for when 

 they are iu bloom roses are at the lowest 

 notch in price and most everybody has 

 them and their season is short. I don't 

 know of any plants more difficult to pro- 

 cure in the spring than satisfactory 

 young roses, say in 4-inch pots of such 

 kinds as Carnots, Kaiserin, Cochet, La 

 France, Etoile de Lyon, Sombreuil and 

 others. You can buy them by the thou- 

 sands from some of our large specialists, 

 but they are small, microscopical sized 

 plants and our customers want something 

 stronger and larger. I suppose if they 

 were as easily grown as geraniums there 

 would be plenty of them, but they are 

 not. There is more time and brains 

 needed in the production, and you will 

 get paid for that, and the man who has 

 an unlimited quantity of these varieties 

 in good, strong, young plants in the 

 spring would find a demand from every 

 quarter. 



There may be more than one method in 

 producing these bedding roses and, of 

 course, quality being the same, the most 

 expeditious is what we are after. Small 

 plants, such as you can buy for $20 to 

 $30 a thousand iu May, and planted and 

 lifted in November and put into a 4 or 

 4'/l>-inch pot and wintered either in a 

 well protected cold frame or a very cold 

 house, and just allowed to come along 

 with increase of heat of spring, will 

 make ideal plants. This 1 am sure of. 

 A good judge of such things said to me 

 last summer, when he saw a bed of Co- 

 chet flowering profusely, which were 

 strong cut back plants a year old, that 

 he thought you got better results from 

 plants propagated the previous fall or 

 during winter. I don't think he was right. 

 The one-year-old plants that have been 

 kept about dormant during winter will 

 be entirely satisfactory. 



Another ]ilan if you have the stock is to 

 propagate in September or October in 

 the ordinary propagating bed. No bot- 

 tom heat is necessary, and as soon as 

 rooted pot them up and with good care 

 and some heat get them well rooted in 

 the pots. During December and January 

 they can be given a low temperature and 

 this will be a rest for them. Then in 

 February shift into 4-inch and give heat 

 and care, and by middle of May you will 

 have a young plant that win soon begin 

 to flower when planted out. The most 

 seasonable question is what are you going 

 to do now. If you retail young roses to 

 your customers I would get small plants 

 of the varieties named and several others 

 could be added and plant out. And if 

 you only want cut flowers for your trade 

 you should get the strongest plants you 



can of three varieties just for the sum- 

 mer blooms which are continuous from 

 June to hard frost, and those three are: 

 Mme. Cochet, both the pink and white; 

 Kaiserin Augusta and President Carnot. 



Those that have a house of Kaiserin 

 for summer bloom will turn up their 

 noses at the outside stutf, but compara- 

 tively few have these, and the great ma- 

 jority of growers plant their tea roses 

 on shallow benches and our best tea 

 roses are of poor quality after the middle 

 of June, or thrown out to plant new 

 stock, and it is a great deal more difficult 

 to get a clean, fresh-looking rose in July 

 than it is in January. You seldom see 

 Perle grown nowadays. This beautiful 

 rose I have planted out in a field at the 

 end of May and cut profusely all sum- 

 mer, but not, of course, with any great 

 stem. Our greatest commercial tea rose, 

 Catherine Mermet and its sports. Bride 

 and Briilesmaid, are useless out of doorS 

 in our northern states. Where the alli- 

 gator regales himself on pickaninny and 

 the cowboy roams in Northern Texas 

 they may flourish. 



Just a word about the soil for these 

 roses in the open ground. From some ex- 

 perience in planting tea roses for sum- 

 mer bloom I have never noticed any great 

 difference in quite a wide range of soil, 

 almost pure, light sandy loam to a heavy 

 clay loam, providing it was not worn out 



Bedding Plants. 



By the lime these lines are read by my 

 friends (if they are not too busy) our 

 bediUng business will have begun in earn- 

 est. 1 tliink 1 said recently, "Put oS till 

 to-morrow nothing that can be done to- 

 day," and that applies most earnestly to 

 the filling of your orders. If you tell 

 your customers that it's not safe to plant 

 out any tender plants till the first ot 

 June you will be simply overwhel.iied 

 when that day arrives, and for the next 

 three weeks the grumbling and the kick- 

 ing you will get from alleged nice people 

 will turn your hair gray. Unfortunately, 

 perhaps, but really for the better, there 

 are more people in the world who take 

 pleasure iu finding a cause for a kick or 

 grumble than those who habitually say, 

 "That's all right, I know you wiU get 

 around to me as soon as v'ou can." The 

 latter class seem to be the salt of the 

 farth and make us feel that existence is 

 not a failure, but the crusty, exacting 

 pieces of protoplasm are the mediums 

 that keep us awake and progressive. 



It may seenx strange to those in more 

 favored latitudes to talk about not put- 

 ting cannas out before June 1, but such 

 it is with us. Plants that are really hurt 

 by a night temperature of 35 degrees, 

 and perhaps with a cold wind, should not 

 go out before the first week of June, but 

 geraniums, salvias, verbenas and all 

 plants that you grow in your houses (or 

 have grown) in a cool temperature dur- 

 ing winter should go without delay, and 

 every flower bed you get planted before 

 Memorial Day will be a great relief to 

 you. Perhaps the largest amount ol 

 plants sold in our big cities go to people 

 who know nothing of the grower and 

 will not hold him responsible for their 

 success or failure, but many of us plant 

 year after year for the same good cus- 



A Cottage Garden. 



by years of cropping; by all odds the 

 best results were from a meadow or stub- 

 ble that had grown only grass or cereals 

 for years and never roses. No amount of 

 manure or any kind of fertilizer will re- 

 store to the soil what is lacking, if it has 

 been a long cultivated garden, and our 

 worn-out gardens are too often the cause 

 of our customers having such miserable 

 success in their attempts to have a rose 

 bed. 



tomer. and we should not do it unless our 

 efforts were successful. 



I am reluctant to repeat what I have so 

 often said that in my humble belief there 

 is only one way to plant either an oak, 

 elm, Norway spruce or geranium, and 

 that is to put the plant into the ground 

 to its i)roper depth, and well firming the 

 soil round the roots or soil, as the ease 

 may be, but not filling up the excavation. 

 Then a watering in the depression, and 



