p^m 



1442 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



IfAZ 4. 1905. 



FIELD PLANTING. 



We are now right in the midst of field 

 planting and a few remarks on the de- 

 tails will not be amiss. When plowing 

 the soil be sure it is not too wet. We 

 are always anxious to get' our young car- 

 nations out just as eiirly as we can, but 

 we find that it does not pay ta- let one's 

 hurry get the best of Kis judgnient. I 

 would rather finish a week or two later 

 and have my plants planted properly, in 

 soil that was in the right condition, than 

 to have them plastered into mud real 

 early. The plants will quickly make it 

 up. 



This spring we could have begun about 

 April 10 with planting but for the un- 

 certainty of frosts. While a degree or 

 two of frost will not kill a young carna- 

 tion plant, yet we do not care to' sub- 

 ject them to it if we can help it. To 

 those who plant only a few thousand 

 plants this early starting doe& not mean 

 very much, as a few days will sufiSce to 

 do the work, but to those who plant from 

 60,000 up to 200,000 it means a great 

 deal. Some of our larger firms are kept 

 busy three to four weeks planting carna- 

 tions in the field and in order to finish 

 by the middle of May they must get an 

 early start. 



Did you get one of those side-hill 

 plows? If you did you will be glad of 

 it before you are through planting. 

 Plow as much of the field as you are 

 likely to plant in one day and pulverize 

 it well vith your harrow, finishing up 

 with a drag to level it off nicely. 

 Stretch a stout line lengthwise of the 

 plowed part and begin planting, ten 

 inches to one foot apart in the row and 

 the rows sixteen to eighteen inches 

 apart, according to how much room you 

 have to plant on. Use a trowel for 

 planting, loosening up the soil as deeply 

 as you can, so you will have mellow soil 

 to set the plants in. Set the plant in 

 the soil just deep enough so you can 

 cover the ball of soil with new soil to 

 prevent drying out. Press the soil 

 around it firmly and finish up with loose 

 soil on the surface. Never leave the soil 

 in a packed state on the surface, as it 

 will bake and become unfit for any plant 

 to grow in. A quarter of an inch of 

 loose soil will prevent this. All this can 

 be done very quickly after a little prac- 

 tice and you will find that it pays to 

 do it right. 



Divide up your force so that none will 

 have to wait on the others and don't 

 leave your plants out of the pots too 

 long, but get them into the soil as soon 

 as possible after they are dumped out 

 of the pots. The young roots will dry 

 out quickly when exposed to the air. 

 Have one man dumping them out of the 

 pots and setting them into flats, while 

 another drops them along the row, while 

 two or three follow him up closely with 

 the planting. By dividing up your men 

 properly you can keep things moving 



along smoothly and have every plant, in 

 the ground within a half h*ur after it is 

 taken from the pot. No watnnDg is 

 necessary when planting in fresh pIo^iiradL 

 ground, as the plants will take hold be- 

 fore the soil can dry out very much. 



Let one of the men before quitting 

 time go through the day's planting with 

 the hand cultivator to loosen up the soil 

 between the rows where it was tramped 

 in planting. Let this be the beginning 

 of the cultivating which should be kept 

 up systematically all summer. I will 

 have more to say about that later on. 

 Be careful of your labels so there will 

 be no mixtures. Use large labels that 

 won't be knocked out of the ground 

 every time you go through with the cul- 

 tivator. 



If you have some late propagated cut- 

 tings in the sand, don't do as we some- 

 times see done, plant them in the field 

 from the cutting bench. Every grower 

 knows how necessary it is to shade the 

 young cuttings from the sun for several 

 days after potting and how much more 

 necessary must it be this late, when the 

 sun is so strong, and how much more the 

 cuttings must suffer when planted into 

 the open field in the hot sun and wind 

 than they would in the greenhouse. Bet- 

 ter pot them as soon as they are ready, 

 into your smallest size pots, into light 

 sandy soil, so that root action will be 

 quick and they wiil be rooted through 

 well enough to hold the ball of soil to- 

 gether in a couple of weeks. 



Always bear in mind that these young 

 plants are to be your stock for next 

 winter and it is not a question of how 

 little care they can get along with, but 

 rather how much can you do to improve 

 their growth from the veiy beginning. 

 As one of our prominent growers said 

 recently, nothing is too much trouble if 

 you want to have the best. 



A. F. J. Baur. 



CoxcoRDiA, Kan. — C. J. Lampe is 

 preparing to build two houses 18x75. 



IN THE " CABNATiON BELT." o 



Chester county is lii the carnation 

 belt of Pennsylvania, where every man 

 and his neighbor have a few houses dd- 

 voted to the divine flower. It is at Ox- 

 ford, in Chester county, that J. H. A. 

 Hutchison conducts the Locust Street 

 Greenhouses, growing a general stock of 

 plants for a wholesale aad retail trade 

 but makijBg a specialty of carnations. 

 Mr. Hutchison still clings to some of 

 the old favorite vkrieties, among them 

 i'lora Hill, which does so well for him 

 that the new whites have a bard task to 

 erowd. it out. The accompanying illus- 

 tration is from a photograph taken., in 

 his house of Flora Hill in February. 



AZALEA INDiCA. 



When the florist speaks of azaleas, the 

 evergreen tender shrub is meant and we 

 have few, if any, more showy or beauti- 

 ful plants. The Ghent azaleas as well as 

 Azalea Mollis are beautiful hardy shrubs 

 where they thrive, as well as pretty plants 

 for forcing, yet ths Indian or Chinese 

 species is queen. The Chinese have culti- 

 vated these azaleas for centuries and it is 

 from crossing several varieties found 

 there that we now have the innumerable 

 splendid varieties. It appeals to me that 

 we now handle an azalea with much great- 

 er freedom than would have been con- 

 sidered wise or safe forty years ago. 

 Planting out in beds and lifting in the 

 fall, and this repeated for several sea- 

 sons, is now the method, not only in Bel- 

 gium, where you may say they are manu- 

 factured by the millions, but it is also 

 done by our florists with stock unsold in 

 the spring. Where you have a deep, fri- 

 able soil within reach of the hose they 

 will summer over and lift in September 

 or October quite as well as those kept in 

 pots and with less labor. 



The azalea is naturally a branching, 

 irregular shaped shrub and if more of 

 our pot-grown plants were allowed to as- 

 sume their natural form if would be a 

 pleasing variety to the formal, closely 

 pinched plants so invariably seen in com- 

 mercial places. In private gardens you 

 do see fine azaleas of a natural, free 

 and easy growth, and most decorative 

 they are. 



Almost entirely the plants we import, 

 big and little, are pinched into broad, 

 flat and slightly rounding crowns, which 

 may be called the utoibrella form, a mo- 

 notonous but excellent shape to make a 



A House at J. H. A. Hutchison's Oxford, Pa. 



