GLADIOLUS CULTURE. 



ly^ p^HE gladiolus I consider the 

 most beautiful and, at the 

 same time, the easiest raised 

 of all tender bulbs. By ten- 

 der bulb I mean those bulbs that have 

 to be taken up and housed over winter. 

 Last summer I had in bloom one 

 hundred bulbs, and thirteen different 

 varieties. This is the collection of 

 years, for I have been a gladiolus 

 " crank " for many years. I have all 

 shades of pink, red, orange, cream and 

 pure white, although white is the most 

 difficult to raise. 



In the fall, after quite a hard frost, 

 I take a fine, dry, warm afternoon and 

 arm myself with a sharp spade and 

 dig up my gladiolus bulbs. Taking care 

 not to injure any of them. I take 

 them and shake all the earth off and 

 cut the tops off about two inches above 

 the bulbs, with a sharp knife. Then I 

 take a box, put in a layer of dry clean 

 sand, then a layer of bulbs, and so on 

 until the bulbs are all packed. On 

 the top I put about two inches of sand. 

 Then I bid my bulbs a long good bye 

 and put them to rest under the cellar 

 stairs. But the cellar must be dark and 

 frost proof. 



The first fine weather in May I set 

 out my bulbs. The most of them will 

 be sprouted, but that does no harm — 

 does not injure the sprouts. The larger 

 the sprouts, the sooner the gladioli will 

 be up. I plant them out in the vege- 

 table garden, for you cannot raise 

 gladioli successfully and crowd them. 

 That is one thing to be remembered. 

 I plant in rows four feet apart, 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 



45 



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 destroyed 

 before they have done much damage. 

 But the gladiolus is free from all de- 

 structive flies, bugs, spiders, etc. 



I cultivate with a horse and a com- 

 mon garden cultivator, and hoe them 

 often. I plant the bulbs all at one 

 time, but they will not begin to put out 

 their spikes at once ; so I have a suc- 

 cession of bloom for weeks and week?. 

 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 heaviest soil and I 

 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 ; I would 

 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 blos- 

 soming bulbs of, perhaps, two, four 

 or six, sometimes even more than 



