J64 



THE FLORISTS' MANUAL. 



System of upright packing, ready for "closing in." 



coarse horse trading Yorkshire, but 

 in genteel English: "Yes, I know, but 

 your folks put the charge on to the 

 plants, don't you know?" Now this 

 is the natural and reasonable supposi- 

 tion, but yet largely it is erroneous, 

 and in the great majority of cases 

 nothing is tacked on for compensa- 

 tion. Packing cases and boxes that 

 answer the purpose cost us very little, 

 far less than the same box would in 

 England or on the Continent, but our 

 labor, even if it is most expeditiously 

 done, is higher than on the other side. 



If you buy a good bill of palms or 

 large ferns or any of those decorative 

 plants that are easily packed, there is 

 no need of any charge for packing, 

 and if a man buys 100 geraniums of 

 us in the spring, we are pleased 

 enough to put them in a box, and put 

 a few slats over them. We get the 

 4-inch pots and that will about pay 

 for packing. We would have to cart 

 them off somewhere anyway. 



But when you sell lilies or azaleas 

 in full bloom, particularly the former, 

 you ought to get more for them, for 

 they take a heap of trouble and time 

 to pack properly. Perhaps we will 

 never make a specific charge for our 

 packing, but there should be an un- 

 derstanding that to the man who sends 

 his wagon and carts them away a lily 

 is worth say 10 cents per bud and 



flower, and when packed to travel 40 

 miles by rail it should be 12 cents per 

 bud and flower. That is what we do 

 every spring and it about pays for 

 the extra labor of packing, and other 

 plants in proportion where much ty- 

 ing and labor is needed. 

 This question will of course always 



be one to be decided by ourselves, and 

 without any agreement must be left, 

 like prices, to the discretion of the 

 seller. The man who today advertised 

 "cases and packing charged at cost," 

 would get a severe blackeye, figura- 

 tively speaking. 



PAEONIA. 



We sometimes laugh at our old- 

 fashioned friends for calling these 

 handsome perennials 'Tinies," but old- 

 fashioned catalogues sometimes spell 

 the name "Piony," and that coines 

 pretty near it. 



The cultivation of the herbaceous 

 section is too well known to need any 

 lengthy remarks. They should have a 

 deep, rich soil; you cannot overdo it 

 on either point. If planted for com- 

 mercial use, four feet apart is as close 

 as they should be placed. They will 

 flourish for a number of years undis- 

 turbed, but every fall a good sprink- 

 ling of manure over the surface and 

 forked or cultivated in the spring, will 

 help them retain their vigor. 



The flowers of the paeonia are in 

 good demand every season and if you 

 have plenty of room a few hundred 

 plants will be quite profitable. The 

 white and different shades of pink are 

 the favorites. There are hundreds of 

 varieties, and many beautiful ones 

 that are called single, some being quite 

 single and others having a small dou- 

 ble center with an exterior row of 

 large petals; these are very beautiful 

 and can be called the anemone sec- 

 tion. 



The herbaceous paeonias are the 

 hardiest of hardy plants. The best 

 time to divide and transplant to in- 

 crease the stock is in October and 

 November, or very early in the spring, 

 as soon as the frost is out of the 

 ground. A small section of root with 

 an eye or bud will in three years make 

 a large clump. When planting small 

 pieces in the fall, be sure to get them 

 well down in the soil; let the bud be 



"Closed in. 



