"■. .-* . * z,^. 



874 



The Weekly Florists' Review^ 



Septembbb 7, 1905. 



bulbs; H. Plath, San Francisco, plants; 

 Thos. Meehan & Sons, Dreshertown, Pa., 

 evergreens; California Ros9 Co., Los 

 Angeles, Cal., roses; J. M. Lamb, Fay- 

 etteville, N. C, plants; H. S. Adams, Ja- 

 maica Plain, Mass., bulbs; Peter Hen- 

 derson & Co., New York, agricultural 

 seeds; John Charlton & Sons, Rochester, 

 N. Y., p?onies and phloxes; A. T. Bod- 

 dington, New York, bulbs. 



Vegetable Forcing. 



LARVAE OF MAY BEETLE. 



1 am greatly in trouble with a white 

 grub and feel that you can tell me how 

 to get rid of it. I have a large straw- 

 berry bed which I dressed heavily with 

 horse manure. Now the plants are all 

 dying off, so I dug into some hills and 

 found white grubs, such as grow in 

 sods. Will ashes of hard wood spread 

 on the ground have any effect on the 

 grubs, or is there anything that will? 

 1 am having bad iuck with m3lons; they 

 die off rapidly but there are no grubs. 



J. H. W. 



The grubs complained of are no doubt 

 the larvae of the May beetle. Under 

 .circumstances like these it is a hard 

 thing to get rid of. The female beetle 

 lays its eggs in the soil three or four 

 inches below the surface, usually select- 

 ing a place where the young won 't have 

 far to go for food. One female Is said 

 to lay nearly 100 eggs at a time. It 

 takes the eggs about fifteen days to 

 hatch, after which they soon begin to 

 scatter around and feed on the roots of 

 whatever plants are nearest. The grub 

 is soft and not hard to kill if it can 

 be reached, but the trouble is to reach it 

 and not injure the plants it is working 

 on. 



A dressing of lime will kill them, or 

 watering the soil with a solution of 

 nitrate of soda at the rate of one ounce 

 of soda to five gallons of water; or the 

 nitrate of soda could be sown on the 

 ground at the rate of 2.50 pounds to the 

 acre. This would also be good for your 

 strawberries, but seeing that they have 

 just had a heavy dressing of manure 

 probably the lime would be the better in 

 your case; about fifty bushels to the acre 

 ought to do the work. This should be 

 spread evenly over the surface of the 

 .ground and well around the plants and 

 hoed in ^11. This will destroy all the 

 grubs>it reaches but of course under the 

 crowns of the plants it would not be 

 possible to reach them with anything 

 strong enough to kill without injury to 

 the plants. 



Your melons are likely attacked by a 

 fungous disease for which, so far as I 

 ^ know, there has been no practical remedy 

 found. The season has a good deal to 

 do with it. Dry weather and heavy 

 night dews are congenial to the spread 

 of the disease. The dews leave just 

 enough moisture on the leaves of the 

 melon to insure the development of the 

 spores. Bains would wash the spores off 

 the foliage into the soil, where they could 

 not develop. Last year in most locali- 

 ties there tvas very little trouble from 

 this disease because the season was un- 

 favorable to its development, but for 

 the three preceding years the disease was 

 very destructive and this year it seems 

 to be again general. If the plants could 



be covered over to keep the dews off 

 them I have no doubt the disease could 

 be averted, but until some cheap and 

 easy means of covering can be devised 

 the crop would not pay for the trouble. 



W. S. Croydon. 



MATERIAL FOR MUSHROOM BEDS. 



It is a great advantage to the mush- 

 room grower if he is so placed that he 

 can procure a plentiful supply of fresh 

 horse manure, so that he can get enough 

 material within the space of three or 

 four days to make up a bed. Where the 

 supply is limited it is a case of collect- 

 ing little by little and keeping it turned 

 over and over to prevent violent heating, 

 and even with the utmost care a good 

 deal of the more valuable properties of 

 the manure are lost through evaporation 

 and the manure is often rendered too 

 dry for best results. 



Even though the manure can be had 

 all at one time it is necessary to keep 

 turning it for a few days to prevent 

 burning, until the most violent of the 

 heat is spent. If soil is added to it at 

 the rate of one load of soil to five of ma- 

 nure it will assist considerably in the 

 cooling down of the manure and save a 

 good deal of labor in turning, getting 

 the mixture in a fit state for making up 

 the bed in a great deal shorter time. A 

 good, friable loam that can be finely 

 broken up is the best to use, and it 

 should be in about a medium state of 

 moisture, neither too wet nor too dry, 

 but just in that condition that it will 

 readily absorb ammonia from the ma- 

 nure. The retention of this ammonia by 

 the soil lends to the mixture considera- 

 ble lasting properties not present when 

 manure alone is used. 



Considerable diversity of opinion ex- 

 ists regarding the advantage or disad- 

 vantage of the presence of litter in the 

 mixture. Our own experience is that 

 there is no need of being too tight-laced 

 about the matter. The chief disadvan- 

 tage of its presence in quantity is that it 

 prevents the proper firming of . the bed, 

 but when soil is used the danger of this 

 is pretty well overbalanced, as when soil 

 is present in the mixture it packs much 

 more easily. 



There can be no hard and fast rule 

 laid down regarding the exact condition 

 in which the material is most suitable 

 for making up the bed, as weather con- 

 ditions and the amount of moisture in 

 the material itself have a good deal to 

 do with the heating properties of the 

 mixture. Experience alone must be the 

 teacher. After the bed is made up it 

 should develop a heat of from 105 to 110 

 degrees, so by taking this as a guide 

 and watching the temperature of the 

 bed the operator will soon come to learn 

 the best condition in which to use his 

 material. If it fails to rise to this, make 

 up a little sooner; should it exceed, wait 

 a little longer. W. S. Croydon. 



FLORICULTURE IN THE SOUTH. 



[A paper by R. Nicholson, Dallas, Tex., read 

 before the Society of American Florists at 

 Wnshlngton, Angnst 17, 1905.] 



I have been asked to write a paper 

 entitled "Helps to Floriculture in the 

 South and Southwest. ' ' This is my first 

 attempt in this line and I feel sure that 

 a great many of those assembled here 

 today would be much better able than I 

 to do the subject justice. However, I 

 will do the best I can and hope that the 

 information I have gained from experi- 

 ence will be of some benefit. 



I will give you the methods which we 

 have found the most successful in the 

 growing of a few plants in the south. 



The Pansy. 



When I came to Texas, about fifteen 

 years ago, pansy seed used to be sown 

 in the spring and by the time the plants 

 were large enough to set out the weather 

 was so warm they did not do anything. 

 Now we find the best time to sow pansy 

 seed is in September. The seed is sown 

 in frames covered with lath sash. It is 

 a good idea also to lay old sacks or bur- 

 lap over the beds, to hold the moisture 

 till the seed germinates, for it is usually 

 very warm in the south in September. 



After the seed germinates, the sacks 

 can be gradually removed. The lath sash 

 are left on, however, till the plants have 

 a good start. We then transplant to 

 other frames, in good, rich soil, where 

 they stay all winter, without any protec- 

 tion whatever, although we often have 

 very cold weather, 15 to 20 degrees and 

 over of frost being very common, be- 

 sides very cold north winds. 



I planted a bed of pansies last De- 

 cember where they were to bloom, and 

 they stood all the cold winter and 

 bloomed better in the spring than any 

 I had ever handled before, which I at- 

 tributed to the plants being small when 

 planted; they made root all the winter 

 and when warm weather set in they were 

 ready to put their strength into flowers, 

 instead of having to try to both bloom 

 and grow, as when they are planted in 

 the spring. 



Pansies bloom here in February, 

 March, April and May, depending on the 

 season. They can be followed with ger- 

 aniums, hibiscus, salvias, verbenas, 

 plumbagos, petunias and lantanas, all of 

 which will bloom till frost cuts them 

 down. 



Sweet Peas. 



Sweet peas used to be planted here 

 in the spring, like pansies, and by the 

 time they were growing well the hot 

 weather set in and burned them up. 

 People used to say, "It is no use to try 

 to grow sweet peas in Texas." Now, 

 however, we have learned differently and 

 grow as fine sweet peas as anywhere. 



The best time to plant in this part 

 of the south is in December or January, 

 some people planting in November. The 

 ground should be well prepared and 

 forked deep before sowing. Sweet peas 

 stand a great deal of cold weather. They 

 begin blooming here about May and last 

 until June. The weather then being very 

 warm, the red spider gets on the vines 

 and they soon die. We have tried several 

 of the dwarf varieties but have had 

 very poor success with them. 



Hibiscus and Plumbagos. 



Hibiscus is one of the best plants for 

 the south, as the hotter the weather the 

 better they like it. We find that we 

 have best success propagating hibiscus 

 in July and August, the cuttings being 

 just right at that time. 



The plumbago is another plant that 

 does exceedingly well in the south, as it 

 blooms best during the very hot weather 

 and makes a beautiful show. Plumbago 

 capensis is the best. We propagate them 

 in summer also. When we get ready to 

 propagate, we cut all the blooms off the 

 plants, and as soon as the young shoots 

 are large enough we use them for cut- 

 tings and usually have very good suc- 

 cess. We try to get a heel on the cut- 

 ting when possible. We root lemon ver- 



