232 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. - 



RAISING FLOWERING PLANTS FROM SEED. 



CHAS. RIXON, ST. LOUIS PARK. 



(Presented at Annual Meeting, Minnesota Rose Society.) 



I am a market gardener; and along with the rest of that guild 

 raise some flowers commercially, such as pansies, verbenas, gera- 

 niums, asters, etc., and we doi it very successfully, probably because 

 we have more space, do not have to force them so and can give 

 them better culture than the professional florist. 



As gardeners, we have to adopt every conceivable method to get 

 our plants into the ground early and in good condition, to meet the 

 competition of the shipper and of one another. Often we "get 

 there" too early— but we have another lot on hand if the first lot 

 fails. To illustrate how^ carefully we have to watch these things : 

 The Brooklyn gardeners who raise the finest melons to be had plant 

 them early, plant them again in four or five days and still again a 

 few days later, all in the same hill, and then when the late frost 

 comes they can lie in bed Sunday morning — the only morning a 

 gardener can lie — and think there is another crop growing just 

 under the surface. 



So with flowers. The winters here are long, and the summers are 

 all too short to crowd in all we want, and we have learned to 

 forstall the late spring weather by having a great many varieties 

 growing while we wait. The pansies and verbenas can be in full 

 blossom when the old ladies first feel like digging in the dirt, the 

 salvias, asters, morning glories, etc., can be strong, vigorous plants, 

 well advanced, and the hollyhocks, delphiniums, and many other bi- 

 ennials and perennials, made to bloom the first season. If one has a 

 greenhouse — and I don't know how I ever could live now without 

 one — this is an easy matter, but amateurs can raise a limited 

 number in boxes in the sunny windows of the home. 



We must be sure of good seed if we want good plants. Nothing 

 is more disappointing to the amateur florist than to find after care- 

 fully raising a choice lot of plants to the time of flowering that they 

 are not true to name, or even that the seed is not fertile, when it is 

 too late to procure more. In buying seed I have learned to get 

 them of dealers who have the best reputation and then to get only 

 the best they have. In getting those that have several varieties I 

 buy the separate kinds and make my own mixture rather than take 

 the seedman's mixture. The temptation is usually too strong to re- 

 sist to put all the old seed and those of unsatisfactory quality into the 

 mixture. Any way I would rather have a few kinds of the very 



