Part 1 1. -BULBS IN ROOMS, Etc. 



CHAPTER I. 

 CULTURE IN WATER. 



ONE of the most simple and interesting ways in which to 

 grow many kinds of bulbous-rooted plants is in water. 

 Bulbs lend themselves admirably to this system of culture. 

 Unlike fibrous-rooted plants, they store up in the scales 

 of the bulbs during the preceding year the principal food for 

 forming and developing the flowering spikes the next year, 

 and only need the agency of water to assist them to attain 

 full perfection of growth. But bulbs grown in water 

 cannot, like those grown in soil, collect a fresh store of food 

 to replace that exhausted by the development of leaves and 

 flowers, and so provide the material that will yield similarly 

 fine foliage and flowers the next year. In a word, a 

 bulb grown in water exhausts itself the first year, and 

 is practically useless for similar culture the second 

 year. But, if we plant the bulbs out in the garden 

 they eventually garner a fresh store of material that 

 will the next year produce foliage and flowers of a less 

 robust type. Hence, it is necessary, if we want to grow 

 bulbs successfully in water, to procure fresh ones every 

 year, bulbs replete with a full reserve of food equal, with 

 the addition of water only, to yielding fine foliage and 



