CHAPTER VII 



Feeding Its Object and Application 



The Chrysanthemum is a gross feeder and the 

 successful grower is the man who, conscious of this 

 fact, and observant of the plant's needs, furnishes it 

 with rich food up to the limit of safety. The average 

 grower looks at the results attained and imagines there 

 is some dark secret process, the knowledge of which has 

 been denied him. One of these latter remarked, upon 

 seeing an extra fine batch of a variety he, too, was 

 growing: "You have a giganteum strain of Mrs. 

 Henry Robinson. Where can I procure some of your 

 stock?" While methods pursued may differ, it does 

 not follow that each grower has his own carefully 

 guarded secret. Soils differ materially and guide the 

 grower in adding thereto supplemental food stores for 

 the plant to take up into its system to amplify its 

 strength and future beauty. In all stages of growth 

 the plants must be under observation, as they invari- 

 ably indicate their own needs. As the drooping plant 

 asks for water, and the unhealthy one, by its yellow 

 color, indicates a superfluity of the same, so can the 

 grower be guided in the need for and the application 

 of food. 



The first essential is a healthy plant, one that is 

 receptive and can therefore digest, as it were, the 

 additional food supplied. If the advice given in 

 previous chapters has been closely followed, it will be 

 found, about the middle of July, that the plants, now 

 having been grown two months in the benches, will 



