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THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



years, till at last there is no revenue at 

 all and the violet growing is given up in 

 disgust. Perhaps the houses have become 

 so infested with the spores of fungoid 

 diseases and the eggs of injurious insects 

 that they want a thorough cleansing, but 

 the failure we must more often attribute 

 to a relaxing of vigilance. You were 

 successful for a few years; you became 

 master of the profession of violet grow 

 ing and became careless. Many little 

 attentions that in the early days you 

 would not dream of neglecting became in 

 your opinion of slight consequence. This 

 I believe is why so many men drop out 

 of the business. An incident that oc 

 curred in my own neighborhood may illus 

 trate. Two young men in my neighbor 

 hood added to their glass about twelve 

 years ago two small violet houses, each 

 10x100, and grew their plants on shallow 

 benches. One of the houses was much 

 shaded by the high north wall of a long- 

 span-to-the-south carnation house, but it 

 seemed to make no difference. In every 

 spot in those houses they grew good vio 

 lets of fine quality, and lots of them. 

 They made money. They admit it. For 

 several years past I knew their violet 

 growing was less successful, but a few 

 weeks ago I had a chat with one of them 

 and my question was, &quot;How are your 

 violets this year?&quot; The reply was about 

 this, &quot;Oh, we have thrown them all out, 

 not a violet on the place. Perhaps in two 

 or three years our houses will be free of 

 fungus and aphis and we will start in 

 again with the same close attention we 

 gave them years ago and I hope again to 

 make a success.&quot; That was an admis 

 sion that they had not fought their ene 

 mies and had let up on close attention. 

 Eternal vigilance is the price of a good 

 violet crop. 



WATERING. 



No subject connected with horticulture 

 is more difficult to handle than this. You 

 cannot give any specific directions; you 

 can only give general ideas. Watering 

 occupies much of the labor of a florist 

 and its proper execution is of the great 

 est importance. Plants in the ground 

 are assisted occasionally by artificial 

 watering, but with our entirely artificial 

 way of growing them on benches and in 

 pots and tubs they are entirely dependent 

 on our attention for their most important 

 element, water. 



I remarked some years ago that good 

 waterers, like poets, are born, not made. 

 Here again is the most truly mental part 

 of our business. The mechanical applica 

 tion is considerable, but not nearly so 

 important as the knowledge and judg 

 ment required to know just when to 

 water. A gentleman at the Canadian 

 Horticultural convention, assembled some 

 years ago at Ottawa, expressed his admi 

 ration for the exclusive use of the water 

 ing pot in the European gardens. 



The writer has had a good deal of 

 practice with the watering can, both here 

 and in Great Britain, and has not the 

 slightest veneration for the watering pot 

 or its use. We don t believe that the 

 production of fine plants has anything to 

 &amp;lt;to with the use of them, and believe the 

 hose has many advantages and no dis 



advantages that we can see. It is simply 

 a matter of who is handling it. The hose 

 in the hands of a careless man may be 

 dangerous to the plants from overwater- 

 ing, while if the same man had to carry 

 water in cans he would be probably too 

 lazy and the plants would suifer for want 

 of water. The watering can is laborious, 

 slow, and expensive. The hose is one- 

 tenth the labor; no excuse for scrimping 

 the planfs, the water can be applied at 

 any degree of speed, and the hose can be 

 used as a syringe to perfection. 



You can soak a carnation bed in the 

 month of May in one-twentieth of the 

 time you could with a can. You can run 

 a stream among violets in November 

 without wetting their leaves far better 

 than you can with a watering pot. You 

 can water a bench of geraniums in the 

 month of May with pleasure and do it 

 thoroughly. You can with a very slow 

 stream look over all your palms at any 

 season. You can water a 7-foot bench of 

 lilies perfectly when they are standing 

 pretty close together, which you could 

 hardly do at all with a watering pot. 

 You can with a fine rose attached moisten 

 the most particular orchid, or water a 

 propagating bed, or even a flat of seeds 

 if you know how to handle the hose. In 

 fact, you can do anything and everything 

 with a hose connected with watering or 

 syringing plants, and to go back to the 

 old watering pot would be as bad as a 

 Manitoba wheat farmer discarding the 

 gang plow and adopting the peculiar 

 method described by Dean Swift s Gulli 

 ver, who dropped on a race of people who 

 plowed their land by burying in their 

 fields acorns and then drove the pigs in, 

 which, hunting with their noses for the 

 acorns, disturbed the soil. And the han 

 dling of 4-gallon watering cans at a ten 

 der age used to produce a corn on our 

 palms. 



It is merely the science of handling 

 the hose. A man to be a first-class hand 

 at watering in plant houses should have 

 perfect sight. We had a man for several 

 years who in other respects was a zealous 

 worker, but would miss plants here and 

 there and leave plants that were very dry 

 without a drop of water. When he left 

 us he donned spectacles. He was very 

 shortsighted and had always been so, but 

 did not want us to know it. 



We have read in a very good little vol 

 ume on floriculture that a man watered 

 a house in a very few minutes by spray 

 ing the whole lot. We don t of course 

 believe in any such work. Pouring a 

 stream of water over a mixed lot of 

 plants would be absurd. The houses that 

 contain only one kind of plant are much 

 more simple to water than a house or 

 bench containing several, or perhaps 

 twenty, but as we have all plants stand 

 ing in blocks, each sort by itself, it is 

 yet simple to distinguish whether this 

 batch wants it or whether it would be 

 better left till tomorrow. 



We don t all have whole houses or 

 benches of one plant. Just now, October, 

 a very particular month for watering, 

 you may have on a bench a few ericas, 

 next azaleas, next some Harrisii lilies, 

 next pot chrysanthemums, next acacias, 

 next cyclamen, next some flowering gera 



niums. Some may want water and some 

 are much better left till the following 

 morning, and if your hose is running 

 slowly it is easy to pass on to the next 

 batch. Some men have to be told re 

 peatedly that they do not get through 

 watering any faster by letting such a 

 strong stream run, and do not do the 

 work so well. Whatever judgment is re 

 quired about quantity for a bench, there 

 is very little about watering plants in 

 pots. If they want watering they want 

 it, and that means that the space be 

 tween the soil and rim of the pot is filled 

 with water; that is a watering, and that 

 is what we tell our customers when they 

 ask the question, How much water shall 

 I give it?&quot; 



Now, if the stream is moderately slow 

 the water you pour on will remain and 

 fill up, but if a strong stream it will 

 dash oif onto the bench and leave the 

 plant deficient of water. In April and 

 May and the summer months a less ex 

 perienced hand can water many things, 

 for there is less danger of overwatering, 

 and if the benches and paths receive a 

 lot of overflow no harm is done, for you 

 want to damp down as it is, when evapo 

 ration is great. 



It is quite different in October and 

 November, when there is little fire heat, 

 and superfluous moisture would be in 

 jurious. As you pass along with the hose 

 you water the flowering geranium with 

 out any syringing, and you come to 500 

 achyranthes that want not only watering 

 but a good syringing, too. The cinerarias 

 won t want syringing but the cytisus 

 will. And there you have with your hose 

 and your forefinger a watering can and 

 syringe in one. 



After the middle of May watering in 

 plant houses can be done in the after 

 noon. In fall, winter and early spring it 

 should be done in the morning. Perhaps 

 it is the color of the soil, perhaps it is 

 instinct or long practice that enables us 

 to see at a glance when a plant or batch 

 of plants needs water. A practiced h*nd 

 will know that the plants along the back 

 of the bench where the heat of the pipes 

 may be coming up, or the front row 

 where the sun and air get more play at 

 them, may want water while the rest do 

 not. So he will run his hose along those 

 rows and say to himself if he is thinking 

 of his business and not of his best girl, 

 Tomorrow the whole lot will take it. 



The quantity of water that a plant in 

 a pot needs, as was said before, is not a 

 question; it wants water or it does not. 

 It never wants a little. With a bench 

 of carnations or roses it is different. I 

 believe that except in hot weather in 

 spring no more should be given a bench 

 than will go thoroughly to the bottom, 

 but be sure you give it enough to do 

 that. This is not so easy to determine, 

 but practice and observation with one or 

 two waterings, will soon teach you about 

 how much will be proper, and it should 

 be applied softly, either with a rose at 

 tached to the hose, which is quickly un 

 screwed when you want to begin to 

 syringe, or with a piece of flattened tin 

 attached to the hose, off which the water 

 passes in a gentle stream. 



Have you ever noticed that a batch of 



