THE FLORISTS' MANUAL. 



J09 



Well Bloomed Dwarf Geranium. 



to ourselves and pleasure to our cus- 

 tomers. 



This would be a good place to say 

 something about a geranium cutting. 

 It is remarkable to see the poor judg- 

 ment (or is it carelessness?) of some 

 men in such a simple thing as making 

 cuttings. We have been told that cut- 

 ting at a joint was not at all essential; 

 don't believe it. Cuttings will root, of 

 many kinds of plants, an inch below a 

 joint, but not as surely. At a joint is 

 where the wood is most firm, and if 

 you left a piece of sappy, succulent 

 stem an inch long below a joint it is 

 more likely to get overcharged with 

 moisture, the walls of the cells are 

 ruptured, decay commences and the 

 stem turns black. If cut at a joint 

 this is not so likely to occur. When I 

 say at a joint I mean an eighth to a 

 fourth of an inch below. 



Then again you will see men denude 

 a cutting of all the leaves except the 

 :small, undeveloped ones, and others 

 ivill leave three or four large leaves, 

 so that if put into the sand or potted 

 they would be just a mass of leaves un- 

 less you placed them far apart. These 

 mistakes are not always by the boys 

 or beginners, but by men who ought to 

 know better. It is carelessness, want 

 of brains and want of thought. 



Now, this pleasant little operation of 

 making cuttings should go quickly. 

 They should pass through your hands 

 as quickly as the half-dollars drop into 

 the ticket office of Forepaugh's circus, 

 but be properly done, withal. The 

 cutting exists largely on what the leaf 

 absorbs from the atmosphere and sends 

 down material to form the root. (These 

 remarks of course apply to soft- 

 wooded cuttings that are in active 



growth.) So do not pull off all the 

 geranium leaves. Leave one perfect 

 leaf and one half developed; that will 

 allow you to stand the small pots close 

 together. 



If it was any sacrifice of material to 

 cut just below a joint there would be 

 some reason for not doing it, but there 

 is none. Neither the piece above the 

 joint you leave on the parent plant or 

 the piece you leave below the joint of 

 the cutting is any good, and whoever 

 thinks it takes longer to cut in the 

 proper place is mistaken; a practiced 

 eye and hand fixes on the proper spot 

 in a moment. 



We are well aware that tea roses 

 root very well an inch or two below a 

 joint, but no better, and they are hard- 

 ly soft-wooded plants. 



While I have stated just how I 

 would trim a geranium cutting, that is 

 no guide to the hundreds of other soft- 

 wooded plants we grow. With many 

 of the smaller leaved kinds a number 

 of leaves can be left on, perhaps the 

 more the better for the rooting pro- 

 cess, but if too many leaves were al- 

 lowed you would soon fill up your 

 propagating bed, and to crowd the 

 cuttings, covering the sand densely, is 

 just the way to produce fungus on the 

 surface of the sand, which is a calam- 

 ity_and often, results in serious loss. 



With the great majority of the soft- 

 wooded plants we propagate during 

 winter and spring. The heliotrope, 

 ageratum, fuchsia, etc., the verbena, 

 for example, root quicker and surer 

 when the cutting is quick grown, suc- 

 culent and brittle. I have endeavored 

 to mention the condition of cutting 

 best suited for propagation with every 



plant for which I have given cultural 

 directions. 



GLADIOLUS. 



The varieties we grow are hybrids 

 from some of the many species of 

 which the large genus is composed. 

 The handsome spikes of the gladiolus 

 are known to all, and for the flower 

 border the gladiolus is one of the most 

 handsome of summer flowers, but 

 grown with such ease by everyone that 

 the price of the spikes is now very 

 low. 



They can be readily raised from seed 

 and will flower the second year. That, 

 of course, is the only way to produce 

 varieties, of which now there are le- 

 gions. 



They are often grown by florists on 

 their benches among other crops to 

 produce flowers in May and June be- 

 fore those outside are in bloom. They 

 will not flower, however, till we get 

 the warm days of spring, and no mat- 

 ter how early you may plant the bulbs 

 they will in a carnation temperature 

 grow very slowly. I have never seen 

 that they injured the carnations if not 

 put in too thickly. 



Plant the bulb on the bench in Feb- 

 ruary among the carnations by just 

 squeezing it into the soil. It needs no 

 covering and the watering you give the 

 carnations will suit the gladiolus. A 

 rose bench would suit them much bet- 

 ter, but it would be hardly fair to the 

 roses. 



Out of doors the cultivation is- very 

 simple. The better the ground the finer 

 the spikes, and in very dry weath- 

 er they should get an occasional soak- 

 ing with water. Very large growers 

 must necessarily use only plow and 

 cultivator. The commercial man 

 should plant the corms (for they are 

 not bulbs at all) in rows two feet apart, 

 so that the horse cultivator can be 

 run between them, and six to eight 

 inches in the rows. Five to six inches 

 deep is about right. When as deep as 

 that they are not in our dry summers 

 so likely to suffer for want of water. 



The corms increase rapidly and you 

 will frequently find two fine ones in 

 place of the old one planted in the 

 spring. If a succession of flowers is 

 desired, make plantings at intervals of 

 two weeks, but remember that you will 

 get no more flowers after the first 

 frost. Before there is any danger of 

 frost reaching the bulb, dig them up 

 and let them lie in the sun for a day 

 or two with the tops cut off a foot or 

 so above the corms. When the stalk 

 is dry cut it off within an inch of the 

 corm, and if they are not wet with 

 rain or dew store them away in flat 

 trays anywhere out of the reach of 

 frost. 



Any place that will keep potatoes 

 will keep gladiolus bulbs. There is us- 

 ually such a place in the greenhouse 

 sheds. They are the easiest possible 

 bulbs to keep; only keep them from 

 frost. We once had a lot dug up and 

 lying on the groung to ripen the tops 

 when over night down came a frost, 

 about three degrees, I thought our 



