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H38 



The Weekly Florists' Review* 



May 4, 1905. 



INDOOR WINDOW BOXES. 



In a number of the eastern cities the 

 retdilers are finding good sale for zinc- 

 lined baskets planted with bedding stock 

 for use as indoor window boxes. In 

 Boston particularly there has been a 

 nice business done with these goods. A 

 very popular style is a raffia hamper 

 from one and a half to two feet long and 

 four or five inches wide, zinc lined and 

 planted with three or four red geran- 

 iums and a few small ferns. At Easter 

 a great many of these were sold at $3 

 each, at which there was a good profit 

 in them. 



FORCING VALLEY. 



I intend to grow some lily of the val- 

 ley next winter but have no forcing bed. 

 I have heard that valley can be forced 

 by placing it over some hot pipes and 

 was told that when the pips arrive in 

 the fall they can be treated the same as 

 tulips, planting in sand and placed out- 

 doors and brought in as wanted. "Will 

 this work? If so^ will you kindly give 

 me a brief outline of the treatment, 



that date the cold storage roots must 

 be depended on and they, of course, 

 need no forcing, as they are too anxious 

 to grow. 



The conditions for the forcing bed 

 for the fall imported roots are: The 

 sand about 80 to 85 degrees, the at- 

 mosphere about 60 degrees, heavy shade 

 for the first ten days, a lighter shade for 

 another week and for two or three days 

 the full light. As the season advances 

 less bottom heat is required, and the 

 temperature of the house should be kept 

 down or the flower and foliage will be 

 weak. A full description of how to 

 build a structure to provide these con- 

 ditions for forcing valley in moderate 

 quantities has been published in the 

 Beview more than once. However, all 

 this is not to the point. 



Without such a structure you can 

 force valley with fair success, in flats 

 on the pipes. When received in Novem- 

 ber select the strongest pips for earliest 

 forcing and the weaker for March and 

 April. Plant in boxes of convenient 

 size, but not less than five inches deep, 

 in sand, or sand and light loam, half 



A Low-FiUed Basket with Draped Handles. 



commencing with the planting and also 

 how long it will take to force them? 



W. A. S. 



The most inexpensive and surest way 

 to produce good valley during winter is 

 to have a bed of warm sand. If you 

 have a coil of steam pipes or three or 

 four hot water pipes in your house this 

 is not difficult to manage. You cannot 

 get the newly imported pips into bloom 

 before the middle of January. Up to 



and half. Place them outdoors on 

 boards. Give them a good watering and 

 cover with three inches of soil. Freez- 

 ing, of course, will do them no harm; 

 in fact some assert that it is necessary. 

 We know that this is one of the hard- 

 iest little plants that grow. Still I 

 have seen the pips ruined by being ex- 

 posed to severe cold and then suddenly 

 thawing. But covered with a few 

 inches of soil no amount of cold will 

 hurt them. 



Bring in the flats as you need them, 

 but you will not have much success with 

 those you start before December 20. 

 Don't put the flats on the pipes but put 

 pieces of 2x4 scantling edgewise on the 

 pipes and the flats on these. Up to the 

 middle of February you will have to 

 leave the flats over the pipes until the 

 flowers are nearly fully developed. After 

 that date they can be brought up to a 

 shaded bench as soon as you see the 

 spikes appear and they will develop all 

 right. Water is a daily necessity but 

 avoid wetting the flowers as soon as 

 they show color. A draught is bad for 

 these rootless plants at any time and 

 the bright suns of March quickly wilt 

 them. I mean, of course, by rootless 

 that up to the time the flowers are cut 

 seldom are any new roots made. 



It may be of interest to some to say 

 that four years ago the writer imported 

 10,000 small pips to make a bed out- 

 doors for our Decoration Day cutting. 

 They were very small, costing only $3 

 per thousand. For three years they gave 

 no flowers but last spring they sent up 

 a lot of grand spikes. A few hundred 

 of the strongest pips were dug up as an 

 experiment and forced in flats as de- 

 scribed above and gave us splendid 

 spikes "about the end of February. If 

 labor will admit of it, we could grow as 

 fine valley roots as the Germans or Hol- 

 landers. Why not? W. S. 



CONTRASTS OF HORTICULTURE . 



[An extract from a paper entitled "Impres- 

 sions of Canadian Horticulture," by Edgar 

 Elvln read before the Montreal Gardeners' and 

 Florists' Club, April 8, 1905.] 



My duty tonight is to act as a sort of 

 mirror to all'present. Whether you will 

 be perfectly pleased with your own re- 

 flection is an open question. It is not 

 usual to tell a man at first sight what 

 you think of him; neither is it always 

 good policy to put a window in one's 

 own mind that all may gaze. 1 admit 

 at the outset that my qualifications to 

 act as guide, philosopher and critic are 

 of the slenderest type, having only been 

 with you some four months, but on the 

 other hand it has been my privilege to 

 see much that is best in British horticul- 

 tural life. 



To begin with, I should like to pro- 

 test against the fashion in some quar- 

 ters of making odious comparisons with 

 British methods, usually to the depreca- 

 tion of the latter. As a newcomer may 

 I say that horticulture in Britain is not 

 yet in extremis. On the contrary, it was 

 never so full of vigorous life as today. 

 It is true there has been a certain meta- 

 morphosis in the trade. The great old 

 firms perhaps do not do the same busi- 

 ners as of yore, but there has sprung up 

 a host of small growers and florists to 

 meet an increasing demand. The love of 

 flowers was never so strong as now. 



I note that the model of Canadian flo* 

 rists is the United Statss. That is nat- 

 ural and perhaps inevitable, but with its 

 turbine steamers reducing the passage 

 time there may come what is to be de- 

 sired, a closer union and a larger trade 

 with Great Britain, It would be a good 

 thing if, in matters horticultural, we 

 could have free trade within the Empire, 

 and as wide a door as may be compati- 

 ble with self-protection to all outsiders. 

 At any rate we ought to seek deliverance 

 from all narrow and shortsighted 

 methods. 



My first impression of Canada was 



