GO EXPERBIEXT STATION. [Jan. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH ROSE SOILS. 



G. E. STONE. 



Although requiring exceptional skill, the management of 

 green-houses has reached such a high degree of perfection in 

 the Ignited States that it seems somcnvhat presuui})tuous for 

 an amateur to attempt serious exi^erimentation with the idea 

 of its being of value to the remarkably trained men who make 

 a profession of grov/ing roses and carnations under glass. 

 Nevertheless, for two years w^e experimented with roses, and 

 during this time freely consulted the best experts iu the line. 

 The experiments were undertaken largely to determine the 

 effects of different soil textures on the growth of roses, to study 

 their diseases, and in general to ascertain the limitations of the 

 plant under different methods of treatment. Such crops as 

 lettuce, tobacco, roses and others are quite susceptible to differ- 

 ences in soil texture, which often produce quite different types 

 of tissues and of growth. Tobacco, for example, wnll bring 

 $0.30 a pound when grown in certain soils, while the same 

 plants, when grown in other soils even by the same grower, will 

 often not be worth $0.10 a pound. Likewise lettuce grown in 

 the light, porous soils about Boston is quite different from that 

 grown in the heavy, inland soils. 



For the best growth of roses it is essential that the soil have 

 a more or less definite texture, and in these experiments it was 

 our purpose to observe the effect of different soils on the de- 

 velopmcnit of roses. ^Ye selected the American Beauty rose 

 for the experiments, as it is considered the most susceptible 

 to soil texture. Tt has even been maintained that a soil suitable 

 for its growth is rare in this State, whereas in Pennsylvania the 

 soils appear to be ideal for this variety. 



Mechanical analyses of some of the best rose soils in this 

 coimtry demonstrate that they contain a large percentage of 



