J82 



THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



the old ball an<d the pot, which I have 

 learned to call, when exhibiting them 

 to a workman, "mouse's nests," for I 

 have found the cavities large enough 

 to domicile a little rodent. 



When potting see that your soil is 

 in just the right consistency. It should 

 never be too dry, and to be wet and 

 sticky would be ruination. Some one, 

 perhaps Mr. Henderson, described it 

 admirably when he said it should be 

 in such condition that you could 

 squeeze up a handful and it would ad- 

 here in a lump, but when thrown on 

 the bench it would crumble to pieces. 

 That is just about the same condition 

 so dear to the eye and heart of a farm- 

 er when plowing his clay loam in the 

 spring, when it falls back from the 

 plowshare in flaky particles. 



In the old country, so called (this 

 is the oldest, geologically, by some odd 

 billions of years) we were taught to 

 sprinkle the new pots before using 

 them, and although it is disregarded 

 in our hurry, it is, I am sure, an ex- 

 cellent plan to dip all new pots a mo- 

 ment or two. We are also taught in 

 Europe to wash all pots before being 

 used again. This is a good thing to do 

 when you have the time, but we never 

 seem to have the time, so we put them 

 out of doors in summer when out of 

 use. If you have a field and can 

 spread them out the rains will do much 

 to wash the outsides, but if the cows 

 walk over them or children play ball 

 with them it is somewhat expensive. 

 Piled up in neat rows with some 

 boards for a foundation does us very 

 well, for then they get thoroughly dry, 

 and when wanted for use a coarse wad 

 of cloth will give them what Nicholas 

 Nickleby had to put up with the morn- 

 ing after his arrival at Dotheboy's 

 Hall, "a dry rub." This dry rub will 

 clean them inside near enough for most 

 all of our common plants. 



The very worst place for storing 

 pots is under a wet bench, where they 

 get so saturated that they must be in 

 poor condition, for although the water 

 we give our plants does not all go out 

 through the porous pots, as somebody 

 said it did, yet it is well to have as 

 much of the porous quality as we can 

 get There is considerable humbug 

 about porous pots, however, and we 

 do not attach much importance to it 

 because we see plants thriving in a 

 green painted pine tub, which is no 

 more porous than our neighbors' pie 

 crust. 



It is a great benefit to have our flower 

 pots and pans all of one standard 

 make, and, better still, to have one 

 maker's make. The breakage of pots 

 in the old days of hand made pots was 

 terrific, and we should squeal awfully 

 had we the same amount to lay out for 

 good potting soil. 



It is difficult to attempt to give any 

 instructions on how to pot or shift a 

 plant, but a few hints will suffice. 



To begin with a rooted cutting. If 

 the roots are small the pot can be 

 filled to overflowing with soil and one 



dab of the forefinger makes a hole big 

 enough to put in the plant; or if the 

 roots are too long for that, hold the 

 plant with the two first fingers and 

 thumb and fill up with one handful of 

 soil, then with the thumb and first 

 finger of the left hand and first finger 

 of the right hand run into the soil per- 

 pendicularly on three sides of the 

 plant, you have well firmed the soil 

 around the roots, where it ought to be 

 firm, and as you pass the plant into a 

 flat a rap will settle the soil and the 

 first watering will do yie rest. 



You ought to learn to seize the plant 

 with one hand and the pot with the 

 other. A good hand at this light job 

 with cuttings that are easy to handle, 

 and has his pots and plants brought to 

 him and carried away, ought to pot 

 easily 500 an hour. 



When it conies to shifting a 2-inch 

 to a 3-inch, or a 3-inch to a 4-inch, 

 you should hold the plant by the stem, 

 letting your little finger rest a moment 

 on the edge of the pot, fill the pot 

 nearly a third full, and then lean the 

 plant towards you and put in some 

 soil, give the pot jusc one half turn 

 and lean the plant again towards you 

 and fill up the other side, and then 

 squeeze the ball hard down; another 

 rap, and the shift is done. Now, by 

 this method you have gotten the soil 

 solid all around the ball, firmer near 

 the bottom, because you wedged the 

 plant into the soil. 



Up to 6-inch pots this method, will 

 do, with perhaps the addition of get- 

 ting your fingers down the sides as a 

 rammer. With all shifts of plants over 

 6-inch, especially with those that get 

 a small shift, say 6 to 8 or 10 to 12, 

 you cannot get the soil, which in these 

 sizes should never be sifted, down 

 compact without the aid of a stick an 

 inch or two wide and one-half or three- 

 quarters inch thick. All hard-wooded 

 plants, like azaleas, want to be firmly 

 potted; and some of our soft-wooded 

 plants, geraniums for instance, want 

 hard potting. As a rule, plants are 

 potted too loosely. 



It would be a dirty job to be shift- 

 ing plants within a few minutes of 

 their being watered, but it would be 

 far worse for the plant to shift it when 

 it was quite dry, or in that condition 

 that it needed watering, and the larger 

 the plant the worsa it would be, be- 

 cause the water would largely pass 

 down through the new soil and the old 

 ball would remain dry till the plant 

 was thoroughly soaked, which all 

 plants won't stand. 



We are able to shift a plant from a 

 4 to a 6-inch or 6 to 8 with absolute 

 safety at any time, because whan prop- 

 erly done the plant does not lose a 

 fiber, but many of our soft-wooded 

 plants soon recover from a little dis- 

 turbance of the roots and with many 

 of our common plants you can always 

 rub off half an inch of the surface of 

 the old ball, which enables you to give 

 them more new soil. 



Many of the soft- wooded plants that 



make a stem, such as geraniums, fuch- 

 sias, heliotrope, etc., do not hurt any 

 if the old ball is down an inch under 

 the new soil, but in hard-wooded 

 plants they should be kept very near 

 the same height. This is particular in 

 palms; they should never be pot- 

 ted below the base of the stems. Many 

 palms will raise themselves several 

 inches above the ground by the roots. 

 Lower them down when shifting, but 

 not below bottom of stem. 



The best work of potting I ever kept 

 the watch on was done by an expert at 

 any greenhouse work. It was very 

 common stuff; Centaurea gymnocarpa 

 from 2-inch to 3-inch. He did not have 

 to knock out his plants, but merely 

 shifted them and did it well, and in 

 just twenty-five minutes he had rattled 

 off 500. That was too fast to last all 

 day, but it was not day, it was night, 

 by lamp light. For the first week or 

 two after Easter we frequently have 

 to put in some "bees," and during sev- 

 eral evenings last spring, two men in 

 three hours, with plenty of help, shift- 

 ed 2,500 geraniums from 3 to 4-inch. 



I have spoken of rapid potting, which 

 most of our bedding plants must get 

 or it would not pay, but the man who 

 can pot well and fast can also slacken 

 down his speed and pot carefully when 

 occasion requires, and where care is 

 needed it pays. He could not handle 

 cyclamen or cinerarias, or above all 

 herbaceous calceolarias as he could a 

 geranium or a canna, or you would 

 break and smash the leaves, but ex- 

 pertness and smartness will apply to 

 all of them. 



I have seen some men take hold of a 

 dormant cattleya and hold it up and 

 look at it and twist it around as if it 

 were a new and unknown reptilian fos- 

 sil, and then fuss with moss and crocks 

 as long as it would take to visit the 

 dentist and have a tooth out, and then 

 from want of knowledge the poor 

 plant pined and died; while I know 

 another who fixes them up as fast as I 

 would shift a cytisus, and this man 

 makes them grow. 



Don't think for a minute, young 

 man, that you are an expert potter of 

 plants unless a superior expert told 

 you so and watched you. I have no- 

 ticed some young men in very large 

 establishments who were poor hands 

 at potting because perhaps they never 

 had a good lesson, or perhaps they 

 were of that conceited build that they 

 would not learn. I noticed in one place 

 where a rapid potter had been at 

 work on a lot of rose cuttings that 

 were calloused but had lost their 

 leaves, and quite a number were up- 

 side down. Perhaps some will say 

 that in our common plants in spring- 

 time anything will do. It may do, but 

 in the aggregate the difference in the 

 result between the right and the wrong 

 way will be considerable. 



Just a word about a potting bench. 

 It should always be of 2-inch plank, 

 resting on cross-pieces not over two 

 feet apart, so that it is solid, with no 



