246 DECEMBER 



tendance must become machine-like in their 

 regularity. This habit is easy enough to arrive 

 at when one begins to trace how failure comes 



o 



from disregard of elementary principles. For 

 instance, I rely on zonal pelargoniums to fill up 

 gaps in the last three months of the year. If we 

 fail to strike them early in March, delaying 

 propagation for a month or two, the plants will 

 not gather vitality enough in the summer to blossom 

 when I want them. They will do their best perhaps 

 in January and February, when bulbs are plentiful 

 and the geraniums are not so necessary as in the 

 darker days of late autumn. 



No doubt the ideal practice would be to prolong 

 the season of things by having a succession to 

 come on when the first show is over. But again 

 to instance the useful pelargonium fifty pots of 

 these timed to blossom in February, and kept 

 carefully disbudded until early in the year, would 

 take up room on the shelves which should be 

 devoted to plants flowering before that date. Of 

 course, if the greenhouse area is considerable this 

 may and should be done ; but in a limited space 

 economy of time and of room is so important that 

 it would not pay the amateur to deviate from the 

 rules which common sense lays down in the matter. 



And to the owner of a small house I may give 

 another useful hint. There is no room in it for 

 rubbish, or even for inferior varieties. If a 

 geranium flowers sparsely or with a short footstalk 

 which makes it useless for cutting, throw it away. 

 If cinerarias come a bad colour, go to a different 

 seedsman for your next seed. If freesias are not 



