28 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet or so in length. Amateurs will 

 sometimes find in April that the younger leaves are chewed 

 or eaten off, and the cause is not apparent. Sparrows are 

 usually to blame for this, and a good preventive is to stretch 

 lines of white or black threads just above the plants. In 

 the absence of these threads, sparrows may attack the plants 

 whether they are under glass or in the open air. After the 

 flower-stems are tied to the sticks, the sparrows do not 

 interfere with them. The plants are usually grown out-of- 

 doors until the flower-buds are about to show their colour, 

 when they must be removed under glass, if flowers of the 

 highest quality are desired. 



During the time that they are out-of-doors they are 

 liable to be attacked by two insect pests, namely, green fly 

 and thrips. The green fly feeds upon the leaves and 

 clusters around the flower-buds in their early stages of 

 growth. The thrips attack the flower-buds when they are 

 fully developed, just as the petals are showing colour. 

 The general treatment for insect pests is described on an- 

 other page, but I will remark here that the plants should 

 be taken into the Carnation house and be fumigated with 

 one of the nicotine compounds. The flowers will develop 

 rapidly under glass, and, if the flower-buds on a single stem 

 have been thinned out to three, these should develop into 

 large, handsome flowers. Shading should be employed to 

 keep the flowers fresh as long as possible. The flower- 

 ing time for border Carnations is from the middle of 

 July until the middle of August, and all the Carnation 

 exhibitions are held between these two periods. 



