42 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



The propagating bench should be thoroughly cleansed, and 

 a thin wash of lime spread over the bottom and sides, then filled with 

 four inches of washed sand, absolutely free from all impurities, 

 smoothed down; and incisions three inches apart should be made in 

 the bed with a trowel, guided by a lath. In these incisions, the 

 cuttings are deftly and vertically set, two inches deep and a 

 half inch apart, the sand firmed with the point of the trowel 

 along each line of cuttings and then thoroughly wet with a fine 

 rose nozzle. 



Carnation cuttings in the sand should be moistened daily, 

 have good ventilation, and be screened from the sun by a curtain 

 of muslin, and not by laying paper or anything else over the top 

 of the cuttings. In the proper temperature, the severed ends of 

 the cuttings will at once begin to callous, or cover themselves 

 with a root epidermis from which cell growth will rapidly elon- 

 gate itself into roots. Cuttings will root in from two to four 

 weeks. The variation of time rests with the varieties, and in the 

 degree of top and bottom heat used. Ninety-five per cent 

 of some varieties will root while of other kinds only about fifty 

 per cent. 



Small growers often use flats filled with sand in the absence 

 of a formal propagating bench. 



Before the cuttings are excessively rooted they should be 

 carefully lifted and transferred to pots, or flats, in moderately en- 

 riched sandy soil and kept in a temperature for a time but slight- 

 ly lower than that of the bench from which they were removed, 

 carried thriftily forward, and gradually hardened off for field cul- 

 ture. 



Care should be taken in transferring plants from the sand to 

 pots, or flats, that their fragile rootlets are not broken, as it takes 

 time to repair the damage and works in the flats for them a re- 

 newal of cutting bench methods. 



At first, two and a half-inch rose pots are preferred. They 

 increase labor and care over flats, but are transplanted with less 

 injury to the plants in the open ground. Flats, if used, should be 

 two feet square, three inches deep, with four auger holes in the 



