GLADIOLUS CULTURE. 341 



gladioli successfully and crowd thetn. That is one thing to be re- 

 membered. I plant in rows four feet a part, and ten inches apart in 

 the rows, setting- about two inches deep. 



What a joy when in about ten days the first tinge of green shoot 

 peeps out! Some may not come up for weeks, but just have patience, 

 and they will all come up if the bulbs are sound. My experience 

 has been that if a bulb doesn't look perfectly healthy, it doesn't pay 

 to plant it; it will only be a puny plant all summer and die when the 

 heat of August comes. The terrible heat of last summer destroyed 

 some of my choicest bulbs. Some small worm will also get at the 

 roots sometimes and kill a plant, but not often. Cut worms have 

 cut some for me, but very seldom, and cut worms are easily destroy- 

 ed before they have done much damage. But the gladiolus is free 

 from all destructive flies, bugs, spiders, etc. 



I cultivate with a horse and a common garden cultivator, and hoe 

 them often. I plant the bulbs all at one time, but they will not be- 

 gin to put out their spikes at once; so I have a succession of bloom 

 for weeks and weeks. Mine begin to blossom the last week in July 

 and keep up until killed by the frost. Some of the spikes on mine, 

 last summer, were eighteen inches long, but, then, I have the heav- 

 iest soil and fertilize besides, with barnyard manure. The manure 

 must be free from straw, or the heat will kill the plants. Use no 

 manure of a heating nature; rather use none. 



Now I will tell you how to increase your stock of bulbs. Last 

 summer I had one hundred flowering bulbs, but more than two 

 hundred little ones, some of which will blossom this year, and some 

 won't. A bulb that has been blossoming once will never blossom 

 again, but instead several new bulbs are formed close around it,and 

 they are the ones which will blossom the following year. So there 

 is an increase of blossoming bulbs of, perhaps, sometimes two, 

 four or six, sometimes even more than that. I always leave the old 

 bulb attached until spring, when I set them out. 



So much for the flowering bulbs. Now for new bulbs which are 

 not ready to flower for a year or two. There are attached to all 

 gladiolus bulbs when you take them up numerous small bulbs in 

 size from a pin head to a pea. These you want to leave attached 

 until spring, when you separate them and plant them by them- 

 selves. Some of the larger ones will blossom, perhaps, the first 

 summer, but that won't happen often. Tend them carefully, and by 

 fall most of them will be fine, robust bulbs, ready for fine bloom by 

 the next summer. Gladioli can also be raised from seed, but I have 

 never tried it. 



In my opinion there are few flowers to compare, in beauty in the 

 garden and also for cut flowers, with the gladiolus. All labor ex- 

 pended on them will be more than repaid, if a person is a lover of 

 the beautiful. 



Large Potatoes Best for Seed.— In some German experiments 

 to test the desirability of large, small and medium tubers for seed, 

 it was shown that large tubers gave decidely the best yield. 



