THE FLORISTS^ MANUAL. 



223 



gerous to the plants from over water- 

 ing, while if the same man had to 

 carry water in cans he would be prob- 

 ably too lazy and the plants would suf- 

 fer for want of water. The watering 

 can is laborious, slow, and expensive. 

 The hose is one-tenth the labor; no 

 excuse for scrimping the plants, the 

 water can be applied at any degree of 

 speed, and the hose can be used as a 

 syringe to perfection. 



You can soak a carnation bed in the 

 month of May in one-twentieth of the 

 time you could with a can. You can 

 run a stream among violets in No- 

 vember without wetting their leaves 

 far better than you can'with a water- 

 ing pot. You can water a bench of 

 geraniums in the month of May with 

 pleasure and do it thoroughly. You 

 can with a very slow stream look over 

 all your palms at any season. You can 

 water a 7->foot bench of lilies perfectly 

 when they are standing pretty close 

 together, which you could hardly do at 

 all with a watering pot. You can with 

 a fine rose attached moisten the most 

 particular orchid, or water a propagat- 

 ing bed, or even a flat of seeds if you 

 know how to handle the hose. In fact, 

 you can do anything and everything 

 with a hose connected with watering 

 or syringing plants, and to go back to 

 the old watering pot would be as bad 

 as a Manitoba wheat farmer discarding 

 the gang plow and adopting the pecu- 

 liar method described by Dean Swift's 

 Gulliver who dropped on a race of peo- 

 ple who plowed their land by burying 

 in their fields acorns and then drove 

 the pigs in which hunting with their 

 noses for the acorns, disturbed the 

 soil. And the handling of 4-gallon 

 watering cans at a tender age used to 

 produce a corn on our palms. 



It is merely the science of handling 

 the hose. A man to be a first class hand 

 at watering in plant houses should 

 have perfect sight. We had a man for 

 several years who in other respects 

 was a zealous worker, but would miss 

 plants here and there and leave plants 

 that were very dry without a drop of 

 water. When he left us he donned spec- 

 tacles. He was very short sighted and 

 had always been so but did not want 

 us to know it. 



We have read in a very good little 

 volume on floriculture that a man 

 watered a house in a very few minutes 

 by spraying the whole lot. We don't 

 of course believe in any such work. 

 Pouring a stream of water over a mixed 

 lot of plants would be ' absurd.. The 

 houses that contain only one kind of 

 plants are much more simple to water 

 than a house or bench containing seve- 

 ral, or perhaps twenty, but as we have 

 all plants standing in blocks, each sort 

 by themselves, it is yet simple to dis- 

 tinguish whether this batch wants it or 

 whether it would be better left till to- 

 morrow. 



We don't all have whole houses or 

 benches of one plant. Just now, Oc- 

 tober, a very particular month for 

 watering,, you may have on a bench a 

 few ericas, next azaleas, next some 

 Harrisii lilies, next pot chrysanthe- 



mums, next acacias, next cyclamen, 

 next some flowering geraniums. Some 

 may want water and some are much 

 better left to the following morning, 

 and if your hose is running slowly 

 how easy to pass on to the next batch. 

 Some men have to be told repeatedly 

 that they do not get through watering 

 any faster by letting such a strong 

 steam run, and do not do the work so 

 well. Whatever judgment is required 

 about quantity for a bench, there is 

 very little about watering plants in 

 pots. If they want watering they want 

 it, and that means that the space be- 

 tween the soil and rim of pot is filled 

 with water; that is a watering, and 

 that is what we tell our customers 

 when they ask the question, "How 

 much water shall I give it?" 



Now, if the stream is moderately 

 slow the water you pour on will re- 

 main and fill up, but if a strong stream 

 it will dash off onto the bench and 

 leave the plant deficient of water. In 

 April and May and the summer 

 months a less experienced hand can 

 water many things for there is less 

 danger of overwatering, and if the 

 benches and paths receive a lot of 

 overflow no harm is done, for you 

 want to damp down as it is, when 

 evaporation is great. 



It is quite different in October and 

 November when there is little fire heat 

 and superfluous moisture would be in- 

 jurious. As you pass along with the 

 hose you water the flowering geranium 

 without any syringing, and you come 

 to 500 achyranthes that want not only 

 watering but a good syringing too. The 

 cinerarias won't want syringing but 

 the cytisus will. And there you have 

 with your hose and your forefinger a 

 watering can and syringe in one. 



After middle of May watering in 

 plant houses can be done in the after- 

 noon. In fall, winter and early spring 

 it should be done in the morning. Per- 

 haps it is the color of the soil, perhaps 

 it is instinct or long practice that en- 

 ables us to see at a glance when a 

 plant or batch of plants needs water. 

 A practiced hand will know that the 

 plants along the back of the bench 

 where the heat of the pipes may bs 

 coming up, or the front row where the 

 sun and air gets more play at them, 

 may want water while the rest do not. 

 So he will run his hose along those 

 rows and say to himself if he is think- 

 ing of his business and not of his best 

 girl, "Tomorrow the whole lot will 

 take it." 



The quantity of water that a plant 

 in pot needs, as before said, is not a 

 question; it wants water or it does not. 

 It never wants a little. With a bench 

 of carnations or roses it is different. 

 I believe except in hot weather in 

 spring that no more should be given a 

 bench than will go thoroughly to the 

 bottom, and no more, but be sure you 

 give it enough to do that. This is not 

 so easy to determine, but practice and 

 observation with one or two waterings, 

 will soon teach you about how much 

 will be proper, and it should be ap- 

 plied softly, either with a rose attach- 



ed to the hose, which is quickly un- 

 screwed when you want to begin to sy- 

 ringe, or with a piece of flattened tin 

 attached to. hose, off which it passes in 

 a gentle stream. 



Some authors say a plant should be 

 allowed to get rather on the dry side 

 and then be given water. Plants going 

 to partial or entire rest in the fall will 

 of course want to be allowed to get 

 more and more often dry, but it is not 

 so with our roses, carnations, violets, 

 or our lilies or cyclamen or geraniums, 

 or any plants that are growing fast, 

 especially in spring. 



Have you ever noticed that a batch 

 of plants, let it be fuchsias or gerani- 

 ums or roses in pots, or anything else 

 that is growing fast, that are plunged 

 to their rims in refuse hops, ashes or 

 tanbark, will far outstrip a batch of 

 the same sort with the pots bare. There 

 is no evaporation from the sides of the 

 plunged pot and consequently a more 

 uniform moisture, and that is the sole 

 reason. This is very marked and a 

 good lesson for us. Letting plants 

 whose roots are active get repeatedly 

 on the dry side day after 1 day will tell 

 on them and stunt their growth com- 

 pared with those that are kept at a 

 more uniform moisture. This may be 

 of no detriment to our bedding ge- 

 raniums or coleus or cannas, but it is 

 to the plants that we want to make a 

 fine growth or produce fine flowers. 



Some may say, look at the plants in 

 the field. "My carnations have not had 

 a drop of water or rain, in six weeks, 

 but they are growing." They are un- 

 der entirely different conditions. We 

 hoe the surface, or ought to. Evapo- 

 ration from the ground is continually 

 going on, and the looser we keep the 

 surface the faster will be evaporation, 

 and the more evaporation from the 

 surface the more moisture rises to the 

 surface from the depths of the ground 

 to nourish the roots. This is called 



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