THE FLORISTS' MANUAL. 



107 



ted in 2-inch you will not lose one in 

 a thousand. 



Pot Culture. 



An early Easter is always a bless- 

 ing to a man who grows bedding 

 plants, for just before Easter he is 

 fearfully crowded and has to exercise 

 all his wits to keep things from spoil- 

 ing, and one of the principal crops 

 that needs attention is the geraniums. 

 Then they are shifted into the 4-inch 

 pots, from which they are bedded out. 

 The February struck plants get a 3- 

 inch as soon after the others as possi- 

 ble, and make good, bedding plants 

 that sell to .late customers, and if you 

 get 50 cents per dozen less than you 

 do for your fine 4-inch plants they 

 pay well. 



We are always successful in getting 

 our geraniums in full bloom from the 

 15th of May to June 1st, and believe 

 that geraniums are grown nowhere 

 finer and better than they are in this 

 city. We believe this is largely be- 

 cause we use a rather heavy loam. The 

 only fertilizer is about a fifth of sifted 

 hot-bed manure, in which there can 

 be little ammonia, but it keeps the 



Bench of Bruant Geraniums. 



soil open. We pot firmly, as firmly 

 as we can, ram the soil down with our 

 fingers, and this, we believe, is an im- 

 portant point in getting them to 

 flower. 



If you are a market grower, and your 

 customers will forget where they pur- 

 chased their geraniums, you can add 

 a 5-inch pot of bone flour to every 

 wheelbarrow load of compost. It will 

 make the geraniums jump. But if you 

 fill flower beds year after year for a 

 good customer, don't use the bone 

 flour; there is no need of it and plants 

 thus stimulated will not do so well 

 when bedded out as those grown with- 

 out this fertilizer. 



The treatment described above will 

 do for all the geraniums of the zonal, 

 rose leaf, variegated and bronze sec- 

 tions. The tricolor and more slow- 

 growing varieties of the variegated 

 and smaller scented kinds we prefer to 

 put in the sand and give them five de- 

 grees more heat during winter and a 

 richer and lighter compost. 



Speaking of composts, we used to 

 have occasion to 'buy some geraniums 

 to fill late orders, and the compost 

 they were in looked like black rappee 



snuff, a light sand and at least half 

 old rotten manure; loosely potted, 

 loose at the neck, almost needing a 

 stake; this is the very reverse of what 

 is right. There would surely be plenty 

 of leaves on such plants, but a poor 

 flower, and such stuff makes poor bed- 

 ding plants. 



Mme. Salleroi is so distinct in its 

 habit that it would be waste of room 

 to propagate it in the way we do the 

 strong growing zonals. We lift be- 

 fore frost as many plants from the 

 ground as our needs demand and pot 

 in 4 or 5-inch pots just as they are 

 lifted, and store away in some light, 

 cool house. In January we cut them 

 up and every shoot is" a cutting which 

 roots most easily in the sand. In the 

 crowded state of our houses before the 

 bedding out begins we put the varie- 

 gated zonal, bronze, sweet scented and 

 Salleroi sections into a mild hot-bed. 

 Put into the beds by middle of April 

 they make fine plants by bedding time. 

 In these varieties it is leaf growth you 

 want, and they are greatly benefited by 

 the action of the ammonia on their 

 leaves. 



The ivy leaf section used so largely 



