EARLY AND LATE LIFTING. 49 



on this line, but it opens up quite a field and may solve the 

 question of growing carnations under glass, early and late lifting, 

 and a constant and uniform succession of carnation flowers. 



Carnations are now generally lifted between the first of 

 August and the fifteenth of September. A successful grower 

 thus summarizes his practice : "I strike my cuttings the first of 

 January, plant them out as soon as the weather permits and lift 

 them the first of September. Keep the house at night at a tem- 

 perature of 50 degrees and day heat at 65 degrees. Fertilize them 

 with old cow manure, mixed with ground bone and air-slacked 

 lime, and I never fail to have a full crop of bloom at Christmas 

 and Easter." 



Carnations can be rapidly lifted in the field with a light con- 

 cave spade and, as raised, grasped by a helper, and without adher- 

 ing dirt, laid parallel in boxes of convenient size. It requires 

 five men to lift, transfer and bench plants rapidly. It was an 

 early custom to plant in clay soil and lift the plant with a ball of 

 dirt around its roots. Experience has demonstrated that there is 

 no advantage in this mode and it greatly adds to the labor. 



An extensive grower says he prefers to lift his carnations in 

 dry weather. To use his own language, "They stand in need of 

 drink, absorb the water given them, wilt and blight less than 

 when transplanted from wet soil." There is a .vestige of vege- 

 table biology in this assumption. A plant from a dry soil is not 

 distended with fluids and would apparently, if not really, suffer 

 less wilting on the suspended absorbtion of fluids by the roots 

 that inevitably follows transplanting. This interrupted absorb- 

 tion is compensated to an extent by shading and a drenching wet- 

 ting given carnations on their removal to the house. Wet and 

 shade closes the plant's stomata, or the exhaling pores, and 

 arrests the evaporation of its fluids. There is no philosophy that 

 controverts the assumption that plants should be transferred from 

 the field to the benches with as little shock to their vegetable 

 system as is possible. 



Excavations are made in the pulverized bench soil to the 

 bottom and the roots of the plants inserted to the depth they 

 grew in the field, the soil being pulled around and firmly pressed 



