THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



Bench of Bruant Geraniums. 



when first potted; after that only when 

 they are decidedly on the dry side. There 

 are more geraniums go off black and 

 rotten through the heat and moisture 

 than there are from dryness. In a month 

 most of them will be&quot; rooted, and when 

 they commence to make new leaves they 

 should be stood over, dry leaves rubbed 

 off and the surface of the soil stirred. 

 From now on you will have to treat them 

 barbarously to keep them from thriving. 



Why you should wait till September 

 1, or about that time, before propagating 

 is because earlier propagation in a hot 

 spell in August is not safe. I have seen 

 seventy-five per cent of fine cuttings 

 turn black in a few days when we had 

 very warm weather. Any kind that 

 you were very short of can be propa 

 gated earlier, but it would be safer to 

 put them in the sand. 



By taking off all the leading shoots 

 thus early you will usually by middle 

 of October get another good lot of cut 

 tings, which root still more certainly. 

 If you don t have time for another 

 batch these plants are in excellent shape 

 to lift and &quot;pot and propagate during 

 winter. 



Florists that grow a variety of plants 



had better do their operations by a 

 system, and our system is to get 

 all our geraniums propagated in the 

 fall without need of lifting old 

 plants. A light house should be given 

 to geraniums; it cannot be too light and 

 dry and airy. A night temperature of 

 45 degrees will bring them along fast 

 enough. 



After our holiday trade there is room 

 to spread out, and then our geraniums 

 get a shift into a 3-inch pot. It is not 

 much of a shift, but it makes a great, 

 difference to the plants. About Febru 

 ary 1 they have made good roots in the 

 new pots and then we stand them over, 

 taking off all the tops that will make 

 a cutting, and those that are not long 

 enough we just pinch out the center. 

 The cuttings from the tops of these 

 3-inch plants will root most easily at 

 this time of year; potted in 2-inch you 

 will not lose one in a thousand. 



Pot Culture. 



An early Easter is always a blessing 

 to a man who grows bedding plants, for 

 just before Easter he is fearfully 

 crowded, and has to exercise all his wits 



to keep things from spoiling, and one 

 of the principal crops that needs atten 

 tion is the geraniums. Then they are 

 shifted into the 4-inch pots, from which 

 they are bedded out. The February 

 struck plants get a 3-inch as soon after 

 the others as possible, and make good 

 bedding plants that sell to late custom 

 ers, and if you get 50 cents per dozen 

 less than you do for your fine 4-inch 

 plants they pay well. 



We are always successful in getting 

 our geraniums in full bloom from May 

 15 to June 1, and believe that geraniums 

 are grown nowhere finer and better than 

 they are in this city. We believe this 

 is largely because we use a rather heavy 

 loam. The only fertilizer is about a 

 fifth of sifted hotbed manure, in which 

 there can be little ammonia, but it keeps 

 the soil open. We pot firmly, as firmly 

 as we can, ram the soil down with our 

 fingers, and this, we believe, is an im 

 portant point in getting them to 

 flower. 



If you are a market grower, and your 

 customers will forget where they pur 

 chased their geraniums, you can add 

 a 5-inch pot of bone flour to every wheel 

 barrow load of compost. It will make 



