22 



The Florists' Review 



Fbbbuary 15, 1917. 



as too often is advised. For store and 

 shipping it is a decided advantage not 

 to have these shrubs too much opened; 

 particularly is this true of the malus, 



prunus, wistarias and corchorus. Keep 

 these shrubs well sprayed until they 

 break, after which spray more moder- 

 ately. 



RATS EUIN CABNATIONS. 



For several days I have noticed that 

 buds on our carnation plants have been 

 nipped and partly eaten by rodents dur- 

 ing the night. Chickweeds also are 

 touched, but nothing else seems to be 

 disturbed and I have found no tracks 

 in the beds. I have noticed a few rats 

 around the place. Do you think they 

 are to blame? A. E. P. 



ers and use it according to directions. 

 There is nothing like it for preventing 

 red spider. A. F. J. B. 



The rats you see in your greenhouses 

 no doubt chew your carnation blooms. 

 Bats are fond of the j'oung seeds of the 

 blooms they chew off. A. F. J. B. 



AVERAGE CUT OF CARNATIONS. 



I have a small greenhouse planted 

 with White Enchantress and Herald car- 

 nations. This is my first experience in 

 carnation growing; so I should like to 

 ask some questions on the subject. How 

 many blooms should one plant produce, 

 under ordinary conditions? How long 

 should they keep on blooming? I plant- 

 ed mine about the middle of October. 

 I was advised to put three inches of ma- 

 nure in the bottom of the bench and fill 

 the rest of the space, three inches, with 

 sod soil. Was that right? In three 

 months I have cut about two blooms per 

 plant. The Enchantress plants look per- 

 fectly healthy, but the Herald plants 

 do not look quite so well. The blooms 

 are not so large on either variety as they 

 were at first. 



What is the best way to get rid of red 

 spider? I have a hot water boiler and 

 keep a temperature of about 50 de- 

 grees at night and 60 to 80 degrees dur- 

 ing the day. The stems are rather weak. 

 Shall I apply lime, and in what form? 



W. P.— Neb. 



A fair, average cut from carnations 

 planted in July or early August would 

 be about fifteen blooms to the plant. 

 Since your plants were not benched un- 

 til October, you could hardly expect so 

 many. Ten blooms per plant would per- 

 haps be a fair average in your case. 

 These late planted plants could not be 

 expected to give as steady a cut of 

 blooms as the earlier benched plants 

 would. 



You put too much manure in the bot- 

 tom of the bench; one inch would have 

 been ample. If the rest of the manure 

 had been thoroughly mixed with the soil, 

 the plants would be the better for it. 

 The stems should begin to become 

 stronger, now that the sun is gaining in 

 strength, but a sprinkling of ground 

 limestone or air-slaked lime, watered in, 

 will help. To rid your plants of red 

 spider, get one of the Evans salt spray- 



PIiANTS HAVE LOST VITALITY. 



Can you tell us what is the matter 

 with our bench of carnations? We pre- 

 pared the soil carefully, using three 

 parts of good loam and one part of well 

 rotted cow manure. The plants, when 

 we bought them, seemed to be good, 

 strong stock, full of promise, and for a 

 time they did well, producing plenty 

 of good, strong-stemmed blooms. Then 

 they began to retrograde. The carna- 

 tion rust troubled them slightly, but 

 we controlled it by spraying, as advised 

 in The Review. Yet the plants con- 

 tinued to lose strength. The blooms 



became smaller, the stems were weak 

 and there were many splits. Now some 

 of the i^nts are even getting so they 

 bear single blooms, like a garden pink. 

 We have fed them with bone meal, 

 with additional manure, and even with 

 plant food, but all to no avail; they 

 have no vitality. One florist told us 

 that we had been given old plants, 

 which had been benched before and 

 were practically done blooming anyway, 

 but we do not think that is correct. 

 We believe that the fault must be with 

 us, as this is our first year with the 

 greenhouse. Our sweet peas are excel- 

 lent and our bench of snapdragons is 

 a beautiful sight, but our carnations 

 are a failure. I should have added that 

 the temperature at night has run from 

 46 to 50 degrees and in the daytime 

 from 55 to 65 degrees. 



F. H. M.— Mich. 



Your letter does not give any clue 

 as to what might be wrong with your 

 carnations. If I could see a plant, I 

 might be able to tell something about 

 it. The fact that you got a good cut of 

 salable blooms in the fail would indicate 

 that the plants were good and that there 

 was nothing seriously wrong with the 

 soil. I hardly think that any firm that 

 makes a business of supplying field- 

 grown carnation plants would send you 

 old plants — that is, 2 years old. 



A. F. J. B. 



Arcadia, Fla. — A. W. Zimmerman, 

 manager of the Arcadia Seed House, is 

 building a greenhouse covering 1,200 

 square feet, the first in this city. 



Apopka, Fla. — Newell & Ustler state 

 tliat they will be unable to ship plants 

 for some time, as the ferns were frosted 

 in the big freeze of February 3, even if 

 protected by slat houses. 



Tampa, Fla.— The Knull Floral Co., 

 which had begun to do considerable 

 l)usiness in the way of supplying young 

 stock to the trade, reports that the 

 freeze of February 3 destroyed all un- 

 protected plants. 



Florence, S. C. — The ventilating appa- 

 ratus wore the insulation off an electric 

 wire in the establishment of De Witt 

 House and sent 110 volts into the bench. 

 When Mr. House put his hand on the soil 

 he received the surprise of his life. As 

 no harm was done the stock, he sug- 

 gests the use of an electric current as 

 an insect exterminator. 



West Palm Beach, Fla.— E. G. Gillett, 

 the Cincinnati wholesale florist, accom- 

 ])anied by Mrs. Gillett, is here to spend 

 the month as guest of C. J. Ohmer, as- 

 ]>aragus grower. "This country is a 

 revelation to me," he said to The Ee- 

 view February 10. ' ' The freeze a week 

 ago did thousands of dollars of damage, 

 all soft stock being ruined, but today 

 it is 70 degrees again and summer." 



Pass Christian, Miss. — "Our old 

 friend, Horace Cheeseman,came breezing 

 in on the coldest day of the year, freez- 

 ing up all the vegetation," says J. B. 

 Adams, ' ' but we had a fine crop under 

 cover and surprised him with fresh let- 

 tuce salad for dinner. But that night 

 Mr. Cheeseman's roost, the Mexican 

 Gulf hotel, burned down. However, he 

 carried a good bulb order when he went 

 away. ' ' 



Orlando, Fla. — This is the report of 

 F. W. Fletcher, well known in the trade 

 as formerly located at Auburndale, 

 Mass., now proprietor of the Bosalind 

 Gardens here: "Florida has experienced 

 another heavy freeze. February 2 a 

 howling northwester, straight from the 

 icebergs of Alaska, swept the state. The 

 minimum at Orlando February 3 was 22 

 degrees. That night was clear, with tem- 

 peratures ranging from 32 degrees at 6 

 p. m. to 17 degrees at 6:30 the next 

 morning. These temperatures, with 

 slight variations, seem to have pre- 

 vailed over the entire state. The dam- 

 age can hardly be estimated at present 

 writing. Citrus fruits on the trees, es- 

 timated at about $5,000,000, are frozen. 

 Young citrus trees and nursery stock 

 mostly are destroyed. Bearing orange 

 and grapefruit trees are damaged, but to 

 what extent cannot be determined for 

 some time. All vegetable crops, except 

 cabbage, are a total loss." 



