1424 
small furnace. to-day three tons of bituminous coal will 
fire 
fire five times as much pottery in fifteen hours. 
it is a very common -:..-.,. ing that one flower pot is as 
good 
good as another provided it will hold together long 
enough 
enough to grow the plant. this is equivalent to saying 
that 
that one rose is as good as another The late c. M. 
hovey 
Hovey has often said to the writer, "Mr. Hews, I want  
want 
all perfect pots. Suppose I am potting a choice plant 
which 
which will be worth two or three dollars. I want a good 
pots 
pots 
pots 
pots 
pots 
pots 
pots 
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. 
   writer often asks himself, 
the demand for flower pots in the next  
qua  
tury  
the  
'^^k^m^^  
All! 
1937. Pots of various sizes. 
all are "standard" pots except the rimless one at the right, which 
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 they 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 sufiicient 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 came out without even scorch- 
ing. 
From 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 be standard in 
quality a pot must be of clay properly prepared, be of 
ratio as in the past quarter?" In 1869 
we manufactured 700,000 pots; in 1894, 
7, (mill, 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 70,000,000 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 the 
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 il be done at the proper stage of 
1938. Fern pans, 
a form of pottery nsefnt for small bulbs and many sballot^ 
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 
