The Weekly Florists' Review, 



827 



MISCELLANEOUS 

 SEASONABLE HINTS. 



Roses for the Garden. 



There is nothing you are i i Ere 



quently asked for in the spring, and more 

 rarely well supplied with, than bedding 

 roses. Our people very properly want 

 roses in their garden. This is especially 

 the case with those who have a summer 

 home by the hike or riverside, somewhere 

 "far from the maddening crowd." The 

 desire and liking for a summer home of a 

 few acres is most properly pervading all 

 classes, from the multi-millionaire who 

 has his 1,000 acres and castle cottage, to 

 the city doctor, who has a pleasant 

 cottage a few miles out of town. The 

 eerj rich, even if their tastes do not run 

 to flowers, will have them for appearance 

 -nkc. and the dwellers in less pretentious 

 homes will be sure, by their environment, 

 to imbibe a love for cultivating plants 

 and flowers. They will find that many 

 things they could not get to grow at all 



have within a few years acquired summer 

 homes and are now floricultural enthu- 

 siasts, who before that barely knew the 

 distinction between a tea rose and a 

 hollyhock. 



These rural residents seldom go in for 

 formal flower gardening. Beds of gera- 

 niums, carpet bedding, or long lines of 

 coleus they don't care for. They want 

 beds of roses, borders of herbaceous 

 plants, clumps of grasses, flowering 

 shrubs, etc., and that is a taste that is 

 mosl essentially proper. Hybrid per- 

 petual roses, the noblest of all the uni- 

 versal favorites, are sure to hold a prom- 

 inent place in all such gardens. If you 

 are asked to supply them now, don't do 

 it unless you badly want to make a sale. 

 I usually sav: "Yes. they can be plant- 



from them this winter ami would run the 

 risk of losing many. Better wait until 

 spring, when, if properly planted, there 

 is no risk." This advice is invariably 

 accepted, t am aware this is no! the waj 

 a tree peddler would talk, but he belongs 

 to a section of humanity utterly apart 

 from the responsible nurseryman or 

 florist. 



Reliable Varieties. 

 In passing I will just say to any of 

 \ on »ho have a few hundred good plants 

 of hybrid perpetual roses in the field that 

 you intend to lift and force for Easter, 

 don't touch them yet; let a good frost 



ripen the w I. Tic- sec 1 week in No 



vember is early enough to lift the Ram- 

 biers and within a week or two I will 



hove somethi 



about the treat- 



ment of these roses from the time of lift- 

 ing until they are brought into heat that 

 I think is a very valuable hint to many. 

 h was very valuable to me, which is 

 why I think so. Fragrant, large, rich in 

 color, as are the H. P. roses, it is a mis- 

 nomer to call them perpetual, and when 

 the middle of July is here their burst of 

 bloom is over. Not so with the tea or 



are so constantly asked for and, to re- 

 peat, too often poorly able to supply 

 and, worse than that, unable to buy. 1 

 am not competent to give a list of all 



tic ,-w-ibl ing summer roses. A man 



like E. <i. Hill knows perhaps fifty va- 

 rieties that would be very satisfactory 

 and bloom constantly from June until 

 hard frost puts them to sleep. 



A few I do know from having grown 

 them, anil these belong to several classes. 

 Ahead of all we must put the pink and 

 white Aline. Cochet, and then comes 

 Souv. du President Carnot, Duchess de 

 Brabant, Admiral Schley, Perle des Jar- 

 dins. Gomtesse Breteuil, Eloile de Lyon, 

 Marie Van Houtte, Mme. Joseph 

 Schwartz, Marie Guillot, Papa Gontier 

 and Sunset. Years ago we grew out of 

 doors and cut by the armfull those good 

 old true tea roses that are so little heard 

 of now, Bon Silene, Safrano and Isa- 

 bella Sprunt. One hardly knows how 

 beautiful is a bud of Safrano unless he 

 litis seen them growing in the cool month 

 of October. Then there is the grand La 

 France, which I suppose is a true hybrid 

 tea, but is usually treated as a hardy 

 hybrid perpetual. 



A much longer list of summer bloom- 

 iug roses could be made, but even if you 

 had but half a dozen of the best, you 

 could satisfy a great majority of your 



To Get Good Plants. 



Now, there tire more ways than one of 

 having good plants of these garden roses 

 in offer in April and May. They cannot 

 be sold cheap; it takes time and space to 

 produce them. There is a great distinc- 

 tion between the tea roses and the H. P. 

 .lass. The latter lose their foliage in win- 

 ter and completely .rest, the same as our 

 hardy deciduous shrubs. The tea roses 

 may naturally rest partially in winter, 

 where they are hardy, but they are ever- 

 green and won't stand to be dug up and 

 heeled in all winter in a cold frame or 

 root house. They want light and, al- 

 though their roots may not be very ac- 

 tive in winter, some growth is going on. 

 The cuttings of any of the roses men- 

 tioned above, taken from plants outside, 

 will roof readily now. in sand, with or 

 without bottom heat. When rooted they 

 should have a house that is from 50 to 

 55 degrees until the roots are active in 

 the pot. After that they can be put. into 

 ;i cool house, no matter how cool. A few 

 degrees of frost will do no harm. But 

 remember that these tea roses are not 

 hardy in our northern states. They will 

 stand 15 or even 20 degrees of frost 

 without harm, but you don't want to 

 freeze them. Keep at from 35 to 40 de- 

 grees on cool nights. Xow, from the time 



you put them into the cool house until 

 the middle of next February or the first 

 of March they are partially resting. Then 

 shift them into 4-inch pots and gi\e them 

 a light bench and a little higher night 

 temperature, pinching off shoots where 

 they want to send up a bud, and 

 by the first of May you have a 

 splendid bedding plant that will 

 quickly start to grow and flower. 

 Don't force them while under glass. 

 Don't give them your rose house tem- 

 perature of 56 to 58 degrees, or you will 

 have a tender plant and mildew. Also 

 try not to let them be over 50 degrees at 

 night at any time before planting out. 

 Xow, this is' no more labor than we put 

 on zonale geraniums, and, although you 

 may not sell one-tenth as many as you do 

 of geraniums, you can get fifty per cent 

 more for the i"-< - : ■ 1 1 . 1 . I think, get more 

 to the square foot. And the reason you 

 don 't sell more is because you don 't have 

 them and people who buy their gerani- 

 ums and coleus of you send away to some 

 catalogue man for their roses. 



Lifting Plants in Autumn. 

 I was told three years ago that Mme. 

 Cochet did not do so well, that is, flower 

 so well from plants that had been lifted 

 in the fall and wintered over as on young 

 plants treated as I have tried to explain. 

 This has not been convincing with me 

 and I have seen two-year-old plants of 

 Tochet and Carnot do splendidlv. Yiuir 

 customers, ninety-nine out of 100, are 

 taken with size and therefore if von have 

 any roses of the varieties mentioned, lift 

 them before a hard frost. Now they can 

 be lifted, and with proper treatment they 

 will be most captivating plants by next 

 May. Here is just my experience with a 

 few hundred Cochet and Carnot last win- 

 ter, and all the other desirable summer 

 blooming tea roses want just the same 

 treatment. They were plants that had 

 ben put out the end of the previous 

 May. They were microscopically small, 

 not quite so small as the bacillus of gen- 

 erosity, nor yet the size of the germ of 

 prevarication: that is, 500 would go into 

 a cigar box. Thev were bought of a firm 

 that raises 14.000.000 roses in the space 

 where one-half a million might be, but 

 they grew and flowered some. Their start 

 was their handicap. 



About the middle of October thev were 

 lifted, cut back to within four to six 

 inches of the ground and potted firmly 

 in 4-inch pots. You see thev were small; 

 larger plants would need a 5-inch. They 

 were placed in a violet house where the 

 ruo-lif temperature was little, if any, 

 above 40 degrees and sometimes lower. 

 Thev did not wilt a leaf and soon had 

 roots ETOwinff. There thev remained with 

 no shift until the follow-ing May. being 

 given one or two moves to spread them 

 out for more room. The warmth of spring 

 brought them along, and by the first of 

 May they were full of strong shoots and 

 flower buds and we could have sold ten 

 times the quantity. Everyone who saw 

 them wanted some. Withal, it is a very 

 simple but sure operation. Those who can 

 not give them a bench in a very cool 

 house can do just about as well with a 

 good, fight cold frame, and' those who 

 don't happen to have any of these roses 

 in the ground would do well to buy of 

 some nurseryman a few hundred plants 

 now and treat them as T have described. 

 Tn conclusion, T would like to hear 

 from Mr. Gurney Hill as to what he 

 would recommend as the best ten summer 

 blooming tea hybrid, Bourbon or China 

 roses. William Scott. 



