THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



169 



Plants Prepared for Packing. 



shipments are nearly always at once 

 exposed for sale. If they make a good 

 appearance they are quickly snapped up. 

 If crushed and bruised they are ignored. 

 The packing is the crowning effort of 

 all your work. 



There are other boxes besides pine 

 now used for transporting flowers, but 

 for very severe weather %-inch pine 

 boxes are the best. Paper seems to 

 be the best medium to resist the cold, 

 a number of sheets inside and plenty 

 more outside. Newspaper is all right 

 for the lining of the flower boxes, but 

 should never come in contact with the 

 flowers or the stems, for it will absorb 

 the moisture from whatever it comes in 

 contact with. Tissue paper only should 

 touch the flowers or the stems. News 

 paper on the outside of boxes is a splen 

 did thing to resist the cold. We all 

 know, or ought to know, that a news 

 paper of a few thicknesses on our chest 

 will in a cold time keep off the wintry 

 blasts far better than the heaviest un 

 dershirt (you may as well have the un 

 dershirt, too). Paper is, although thin, 

 airtight, and a number of layers will 

 resist the coldest weather for a long 

 time. So either in cold or hot weather 

 plenty of it should be used, and it 

 should be always dry. If wet it would 

 be a conductor of cold. 



The above remarks have been mostly 

 suitable for shipping flowers some dis 

 tance. The grower, and there are many 



such, whose houses are only a few miles 

 in the country, who sees his boxes 

 aboard the train, and Fritz, the express 

 driver at the city end, knows them and 

 shoves them on his wagon and soon de 

 livers them, has not all this care and 

 trouble. We know from experience that 

 when we are quite sure our boxes will 

 be carefully handled and promptly de 

 livered, our carnations and roses and 

 violets, mums or gladioli or asters, can 

 be just laid in the box, giving them lots 

 of room, and they will arrive at our 

 store in an hour or so just as they left 

 the houses. But very different would 

 it be had they to go into strangers 

 hands and journey 400 miles. 



The cutting of flowers is hardly 

 within the scope of this article, but 

 . here is an opportunity to say that our 

 leading flowers should not be cut and 

 at once packed. If you do, they are 

 unfit for sale in the store for ten hours. 

 A cool cellar is a great boon to a florist, 

 whore he can store his flowers a day or 

 a night before shipping. I may differ 

 with some, but if the cellar is moist as 

 well as cool, none the worse; for roses 

 I am sure it is better to be moist; for 

 carnations, perhaps not. 



Roses are cut several times a day 

 when they are fit and should be in water 

 a few hours before shipping. Once a 

 day is enough to cut carnations, which 

 should be always fully expanded. We 

 prefer to cut (or as some say, &quot;pull&quot; 



them) in the morning and ship to town 

 in the evening, or if it suits better, to 

 cut in the evening and ship in the 

 morning, but never ship the freshly cut 

 flowers. Violets we like to pick towards 

 evening and put their stems in water, 

 but not in a cellar; under a rose or 

 carnation bench is best; if kept on ice 

 or in a very cool cellar they lose all 

 their odor. Lily of the valley should 

 also be cut and bunched and stood in 

 water in the cool for twenty-four hours 

 before using. The stems get charged 

 with water and last longer and are 

 stiffer. Chrysanthemums can be cut a 

 day or several days ahead, just before 

 they are fully developed. Here again 

 my experience tells me that if the cel 

 lar is moist as well as cold it will keep 

 the mums in fine order. Cut all 

 bulbous flowers a day before you want 

 to use them and then they won t wilt. 



We are often sorely vexed at some 

 miserable breakdown in the very last 

 part of the packing or care of flowers, 

 and this is more than annoying. If 

 your crop had failed at the start you 

 could have perhaps replaced it, but 

 carelessness or &quot;thickheadedness&quot; in 

 the handling of flowers at the last mo 

 ment is heartbreaking. You have built 

 the houses, watched and labored at the 

 crops; perhaps through the curling 

 smoive of a 10-cent domestic you have 

 viewed your Flora Hill carnations or 

 Marie Louise violets and through a 

 hazy but pleasant daydream figured on 

 the proceeds, pencilling on the nearest 

 plate or rafter so many thousands at so 

 much per hundred, and all this is 

 wrecked by some poor or careless hand 

 ling at the last moment. 



We are often called upon to send 

 designs away by. rail. There is only 

 one way; they must be so fastened 

 to the box, bottom and sides, by wire 

 that they cannot move, and lightly cov 

 ered with tissue paper and protected 

 from frost. If any considerable amount 

 and the distance is not too far, it is 

 always more satisfactory to send a com 

 petent man with the flowers, to unpack 

 and fix any little damage done in 

 transit. 



When receiving a box of flowers that 

 you think are frozen, put the box with 

 out unpacking in a cool cellar, that the 

 frost may come out very gradually. 

 Many flowers are not much the worse 

 for a degree or two of frost, but if 

 suddenly unpacked in a warm store, 

 when frozen, they would be useless. 



PACKING PLANTS. 



Among the large commercial houses 

 of this country the packing of plants 

 of every kind and at all seasons is 

 reduced to a science and most admir 

 ably done; and still better, the pur 

 chaser has nothing to pay for their 

 expeditious work and material. The 

 Belgians are excellent packers, but we 

 have to pay for their old boxes. The 

 English are clumsy, old-fashioned and 

 antediluvian packers, but one part of 

 their packing is not obsolete and that 

 is the charge for boxes, hampers and 

 mats, which are always charged at full 

 price. Strange that a people so great 



