1424 



POTS 



POTTING 



small furnace. To-day three tons of bituminous coal will 

 fire five times as much pottery in fifteen hours. 



It is a very common saying that one flower pot is as 

 good as another, provided it will hold together long 

 enough to grow the plant. This is equivalent to saying 

 that one rose is as good as another. The late 0. M. 

 Hovey has often said to the writer, "Mr. Hews, I want 

 all perfect pots. Suppose I am potting a choice plant 

 which will be worth two or three dollars. I want a good 



1937. Pots of various sizes. 



All are " standard " pots except the rimless one at the right, which is a " rose pot 



Straight pot for it, but I am obliged to pull the pile over 

 before I can find one. When I do find one it is sure to 

 be of such a soft burn that it will hardly hold together." 

 We would then examine some of the choice subjects in 

 his greenhouse, and they were sure to be in warped and 

 cracked pots. "Such a pot spoils the sale of a plant 

 unless I repot it." This was before the day of standard 

 pots. When the Society of American Florists met at 

 Washington in 1892 the writer spent several hours in the 

 greenhouses of the various departments. To say that 

 many of the flower pots looked as if tliey belonged to 

 that class of pottery found in the Indian mounds of 

 Mexico would be a reflection on the aborigines. The 

 poor preparation of poor materials is a feature of 

 the thousands of inferior flower pots that flood our 

 markets. The practical florists were long ago convinced 

 that the best pots are the cheapest. 



Grades of clay used in the manufacture of flower pots 

 are almost as numerous as the banks in which they are 

 found, and require many different methods of treatment. 

 To separate the stones from the clay has always been a 

 very perplexing as well as expensive problem. The clay is 

 first plowed by means of a horse and capstan, whereby one 

 horse will do the work of twenty men with picks. This 

 clay is then loaded in dump carts and carried to the 

 mill, where it is shoveled through a disintegrator, which 

 expels the larger stones and crushes the smaller ones. 

 It then falls on an endless belt and is carried to a 

 revolving drier. This is a new western device, where, 

 by the use of crude petroleum for heat, we evaporate 

 from 20 to 25 per cent of moisture from the clay, and 

 while it passes through a direct blaze of white heat 

 there is sufficient moisture all the time to prevent it 

 from burning. ( Burning of the clay at this stage would 

 make it worthless.) To demonstrate this point beyond 

 question, paper and dry shavings were passed through 

 with the clay, and they canie out without even scorch- 

 ing. 



Prom the drier, the clay goes into large bins, where it 

 must remain 24 hours, so that portions of it which have 

 become too dry and hard may absorb the moisture from 

 that not dry enough. From these bins it is carried to 

 whippers, which beat the clay without further crushing 

 the stone. From the whipper it goes to the revolving 

 screens, and thence to the elevators. 



The next process is mixing, or, as we term it, "pug- 

 ging." This is all done by machinery. From one ma- 

 chine the clay comes out very soft and plastic, to be 

 worked into plaster molds. From the other the clay 

 comes out into hard cubes for the iron molds of the 

 machine. The pot machine and the jigger of to-day 

 each does the work of from six to eight men at the 

 wheel, even at as late a date as 1885. 



The difference in cost between a good and a poor pot 

 is very slight, and if the florist will demand and accept 

 nothing but a first-class pot, a standard in quality as 

 ■Well as size will soon be reached. To ])e standard in 

 quality a pot must be of clay properly prepared, be of 



uniform firing, and of a smooth surface inside as welj 

 as out. It must also be of right porosity, a condition 

 which can be attained by the proper mixture of clay. 

 Moreover, a machine-made pot should have a smooth 

 rim on the inside, so that the man standing at his 

 bench potting thousands of plants per day, as is being 

 done constantly in large establishments, may have some 

 flesh on his thumbs at night. Such a pot must also 

 be able to stand transportation and years of usage if 

 necessary. " Standard " flower pots, such 

 as are now used by American florists, 

 are shown in Figs. 1937. 



The writer often asks himself, "Will 

 the demand for flower pots in the next 

 quarter century increase in the same 

 ratio as in the past quarter?" In 1869 

 we manufactured 700,000 pots; in 1894, 

 7,000,000, or ten times as many after a 

 lapse of 25 years. If the same factory 

 can in 1920, another 25 years later, pro- 

 duce and sell 70,000,0001 we shall verily 

 be living in a land of flowers ! 



A. H. Hews. 

 POTSHERDS. Gardener's name for 

 broken pots and crocks, a material used 

 in the bottom of pots, pans, boxes, etc., to afford drain- 

 age. Coal clinkers, gravel, etc., are often used for the 

 same purpose. 



POTTING. The first stage in the life of the plant is 

 when the seedling is transplanted from the seed-bed or 

 the cutting is put in the cutting bench. It is only when 

 either is potted that it can truly be said to take on tha 

 dignity of a plant. It is then out of swaddling clothes 

 and enters the ranks of its big brothers and sisters, 

 on the way to making its bow in society; to live per- 

 chance in the window of the tenement or on the fire 

 escape ; mayhap to refresh the eye of the patient in the 

 sick room ; or to lose its identity in rows of its fellows 

 in great glass houses where the blossoms are garnered 

 and sent to market ; perhaps to take its place in row 

 upon row of its kind and make an arabesque pattern 

 or gay border, and so delight the eye or regale the 

 senses with sweet odors. 



The mechanical operation of potting includes also 

 "shifting," i. e., transferring the plant from a small to 

 a larger pot. Repotting signifies the same, generally 

 speaking, as shifting; but speaking technically it 

 means shaking out an established plant and putting it 

 in a pot of the same size or one smaller, according to 

 its needs. The actual operation of potting is very sim- 

 ple, and yet it must be well done to give the young 

 plant a fair start in life. Careless potting is respon- 

 sible for many losses in plants. The vast majority of 

 rooted cuttings and seedlings should be potted in 2-inch 

 pots, and it is essential, particularly in the case of 

 rooted cuttings, that it be done at the proper stage of 



1938. Fern pans. 



A form of pottery useful for small bulbs and many shallow- 

 rooted subjects of which spreading masses are desired. 



development of the roots. When the roots are from one~ 

 eighth to one-fourth of an inch long they may be said 

 to be at their best for potting. If sooner, the plants are 

 not likely to develop as rapidly in the pot as if left in 

 the cutting bench; if later, they are harder to handle, 

 injury is liable to result, and they do not as readily 

 recover from the shock incidental to the change. The 



