110 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTDEAL SOCIETY. 



and so much brick rubbish and charcoal ; but the American 

 grower prepares his in the field withovit a foot of turf ; he must 

 and so he does. He has several methods and perhaps the best 

 and most common-sense one is to cultivate the area for stripping, 

 growing thereon a crop of clover with no object beyond turning 

 the best of what is put into the soil as manure into plant food 

 of the kind which the Carnation most needs. The American 

 grower raises more and better Carnations than his English com- 

 peer. He has, it is true, many advantages not possessed by the 

 Briton. He has better light during the winter time, he has 

 made a specialty of the Avork, and more than all, he has originated 

 a new type of Carnations. What I have said about Carnation 

 growing only goes to show that the importance of a prescribed 

 composition of the soil is over-estimated. 



I said I had only one compost heap ; this is not quite true, for 

 beside it I have a special one for Chrysanthemums. Perhaps I 

 am fussy in this, as I don't think it makes much difference. I am 

 fond of experiments and have made lots of blunders in my time, 

 but I can say this, that two plants potted in the soil from the 

 common pile were just as good as those grown in special soil. 

 The specimen G-arza shown at the last exhibition here was one 

 of these. 



When I first set out to pile up potting soil I scratched hard 

 for turf. I landed in New Jersey, and those who have lived in 

 the manufacturing districts about New York know how scarce a 

 bit of turf is. I was bound to have it, and so made up a pile of 

 witch grass dug from the road-side. It was not very bad, for witch 

 grass does not grow in poor soil. I was delighted, however, when 

 1 came to Massachusetts and the possibilities of a rare com- 

 post heap grew in my imagination, but I soon learned that 

 turf here was not as free as water by any means. It is an old 

 saying that " one never knows the worth of a thing until he wants to 

 buy it." I was not to be baffled, however, and in less than a year 

 I had half a dozen piles. I scoured the hollows in the woods for 

 decayed leaf soil, and well remember coming across an old-time 

 charcoal burner's camping ground in a clearing, well covered with 

 turf. I thought I had now found just the right kind of soil for 

 everything ; but it proved to be the deadest stuff I ever used. 

 Like a fancy dish it was no good without a dressing — a dress- 

 ing of manure in this case. I made up my mind to keep my 



