352 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



Then it has been found that there is a great advantage to the Northern 

 dealer to have his roses grown in the longer season of the South, where the 

 plants are not damaged by mildew as they are in the North. The demand for 

 good roses is practically unlimited. Other plants may have a popularity for 

 a time, but the rose lives through every fashion and is more and more popular 

 every year. Then the immense numbers that are now used by the growers 

 of flowers for winter cutting creates a new demand for plants, and forms a 

 great specialty into which skillful men in the South can enter successfully. 

 The ease and cheapness with which roses can be propagated in the South will 

 inevitably cause the culture to centre there, since the Northern growers can- 

 not compete with the Southern product when it is put on the market in large 

 numbers. Here, too, the simple sash on a frame comes in for profitable use. 

 It is found in the North that the tender sorts of roses like the Teas and Nois- 

 ettes, do not root readily from cuttings grown in the open ground, and the 

 plants, too, are not hardy enough to be left in the open ground in winter. In 

 the South the plants are not only hardy, but the cuttings can be rooted just 

 as easily as those from the housed plants in the North. Then in the case of 

 that gorgeous family of roses known to the trade as hybrid perpetuals, which 

 unlike the teas and other everblooming sorts, ripen their wood and drop their 

 leaves in the fall, this ripe wood can be made into cuttings eight or ten inches 

 long and inserted full length in the open ground in the South in the fall, 

 slightly covered with pine leaves to prevent hard freezing, and they root with 

 ease and make fine large bushes for shipping North in the fall so that the 

 florists can have them to pot for spring sales of large plants. 



PROPAGATING TENDER ROSES IN THE SOUTH. 



This is probably the most profitable use that can be made of cold frames 

 in the South, by men who have acquired the rquisite skill in the work, and 

 the method is easily learned if the learner is content to go slowly at first, until 

 he has acquired the requisite skill in handling such plants ; for, no matter how 

 much one may read on such a subject, skill only comes from practice. When 

 done on a large commercial scale, the propagation of roses can be better done 

 in a regular propagating house, where the operator can work with more ease 

 and in any weather ; still, the propagation can be carried on with the simple 

 frame with about as much certainty as in a well appointed propagating house ; 

 of the use of which we will speak after we have completed the consideration of 

 frames and their use. 



The propagation of tea and other evergreen roses should begin about the 

 last of August, and can here be continued from cuttings from the open field 



