50 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE 



with the fingers. The plants are set eight or ten inches apart each 

 way and two inches from the edge of the bench. Some knowl- 

 edge of the dwarfer and grosser growing kinds is a factor in the 

 planting distances. Plants should be graded as to the size, and 

 the smaller ones from the field potted to fill vacancies that may- 

 occur on the benches, and if carried cold through the winter, will 

 make magnificent blooming pot plants in the spring. No car- 

 nation will give satisfaction in less than a six- inch pot. Soil on 

 the benches should be not less than five inches deep and but little 

 richer than that in the field. A rich soil is detrimental to the 

 plants until they are established and begin to feed. 



The carnation is a well defined biennial ; the leading pecul- 

 iarity of a biennial is that it lives two years, interrupted midway 

 in its life by the coma of a winter's cold. The forces of its life in 

 these two seasons have entirely a different trend The first 

 season is devoted exclusively to the vegetative developement of 

 the plant ; the second season, its life is given over to reproductive 

 energies, to strenous efforts to continue its species of which flowers 

 are incident. 



All biennials have a vegetative and a reproductive stage of 

 life and a coma of life's forces between these stages. They can 

 then be lifted and replanted without the least disturbance of vital 

 activities When the vegetative stage has culminated, is the time 

 to lift carnations; it may be difficult to determine that stage, but 

 this is the last analysis of the lifting question. It is also a solu- 

 tion of why carnations that even approach the torpor stage in 

 biennial life can bear removal, as no annual or perennial will. 



Adaptation by selection and greenhouse methods have con- 

 verted the carnation into an annual with a lengthened season; 

 but its stages of life will ever be marked with puberty and 

 adolescence and maturity, vegetative and reproductive forces, in the 

 biograph}^ of its life. Frequently these two vital energies become 

 deranged and abnormally developed. Every grower has met 

 with great, strong, robust carnation plants comparatively sterile 

 of flowers. The vegetative energy has extinguished its reprodiictive 

 life, consequently the plant is diseased. In growing carnations 



