CHAPTER VI 

 CUTTING AND PACKING THE FLOWERS 



A NURSERYMAN who does not specialise in carnations and is content 

 to grow anything up to a thousand or so, naturally does not go to 

 any great expense in providing special and elaborate facilities for 

 the packing of his blooms, being quite content to make the best 

 use of those he has at hand. But the specialist, the grower of 

 thousands, with whom the packing and marketing of cut bloom 

 is a very large and important part of the routine, does go out of 

 his way to provide facilities that are both labour-saving and efficient. 

 He provides for himself a proper packing shed, the roof of which is 

 thickly thatched. The building need not be lofty (unless it has 

 also to be used for packing general nursery stock, which we think 

 unlikely), but it must be high enough to be airy and roomy. Packing 

 benches run around the sides, while the centre is fitted with 

 receptacles to hold water, say, either galvanised or cement shallow 

 tanks, with numerous movable divisions, from either side of which 

 the packers can take the blooms without getting in one another's 

 way. Still, whether it be the small grower with his plugged 

 flower pots, his pails and his jars, or the large grower with his 

 permanent tanks, the essentials remain the same the ventilation 

 of the shed must be good, the air cool, the water fresh for the 

 flowers which have to stand a whole day or a night in it before 

 being packed. 



Take those as the essential points. There is a correct time for 

 cutting the blooms, and this is either in the early morning or at 

 the fall of evening. To cut them in the day-time, when the sun is 

 or has been shining, or when the ordinary day-time evaporation 

 has reduced the moisture within them, is unreasonable and faulty, 

 for blooms cut under those conditions are not likely to last out their 

 full term, and this is unfair to the purchaser. Practically the same 

 non-keeping qualities attach to blooms cut from a plant that is 

 dry, but this is so obvious that we might feel some hesitation in 

 referring to it. The grower whose market is so distant that he 



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