1860 



The Weekly Florists' Review* 



May 17, 1906. 



six to ten years to get a good start but 

 those years of living the simple life will 

 not be spent in riotous living but in pro- 

 longing your days, so you have really 

 lost nothing. 



Securing a Location. 



When you have accurnulatod your lit- 

 tle wad cast about for your opening in 

 some nice little town of 3,000 or more 

 inhabitants. If you can buy an unsuc- 

 cessful florists' business ycu can usually 

 make your money go farther than when 

 you build new and you, furthermore, 

 have an established trade to start with; 

 while on the other hand you are often 

 liable to get "soaked" if you are not 

 extremely careful. A lease for a year 

 or two with privilege of buying at a given 

 figure is the best way to buy a second- 

 hand place. I have known of fairly de- 

 cent opportunities to buy up a place for 

 from $1,000 to $2,000; whereas, a new 

 place (and if I built new 1 should build 

 as much as possible of concrete and iron 

 to keep down the usually large annual 

 repair account) would cost about $3,000. 



If you build new choose as central a 

 location as you can so that people can 

 buy direct from your greenhouse. A 

 lot 66x165 feet in a small town will cost 

 about $500 and in a small city $1,000 to 

 $1,500. The second figure ought to get 

 you a lot well located in a city of 10,000 

 inhabitants. A house 22x100 feet of lat- 

 est construction, iron posts, gutters and 

 purlins and iron and tile benches, divided 

 into three compartments for maintaining 

 differences of temperature will cost from 

 $1,500 to $1,800, according as material 

 is high or low, and based on hot water 

 heating. Don't use steam on less than 

 25,000 feet of glass. A concrete basement 

 and boiler house 20x22 feet with two 

 hot water boilers will cost about $1,000. 

 Don't build a fire trap. Insurance, if 

 you can get any on it, will cost $2.50 

 a year on every $100 insurance on the 

 building and $3.50 per $100 on stock. 

 "With a full concrete basement you don 't 

 need insurance. 



A small stock of palms, ferns and 

 other decorative stock will cost $500. I 

 should use the house only for decorative 

 material and potted plants, depending 

 on the nearest market for the cut flowers 

 and funeral designs. Thus your invest- 

 ment will be from $3,000 to $4,000 and 

 the repairs for the first ten years will 

 be a very small outlay. 



Running Your Place. 



You have probably all read about what 

 the receipts ought to be from a house of 

 this size. It has a reputation of earning 

 $1 per square foot but that's a pipe 

 dream. If you are a good trade getter, 

 kind, courteous, solicitous, and that is 

 not an easy matter when some old woman 

 comes around haggling over the price of 

 a 10-cent geranium when you ought to 

 be at the other end of the house mending 

 a leaky joint ; I say, if you are a ' * reg '- 

 lar rip snorter" over the sales counter 

 you may land about $750 the first year 

 and the business will cost you in the 

 neighborhood of $500 to run, not includ- 

 ing your wages nor interest on any 

 ■noney you may have borrowed. On the 

 cut flowers you buy and sell you may — 

 you may — make a profit of $250, pro- 

 vided you can hand out about $20 worth 

 a week, besides the sales out of the 

 greenhouse, yet this profit depends on 

 how judiciously you bought and whether 

 you sold for cash or ' ' put it on the ice. ' ' 

 If you extend credit too freely somebody 

 will get rich off your poverty. 



From what I have just said you will 



see how easy it will be to just miss 

 them 'ere $500 with which you intend to 

 pay yourself wages and develop the 

 ' ' biz. ' ' But that will be no real cause 

 for discouragement. If you have taken 

 well my advice as to "hornin' in a 

 little on 'spenses" you will be able to 

 live on the net proceeds of the greenhouse 

 and then use the paper profits on the 

 posies for further development. 



You can live on $250 a year if you have 

 to but the average man makes a grimace 

 when he takes the medicine. Of course, 

 if you are married and have nine or ten 

 children to support these remarks do not 

 hold out much encouragement to you but 

 it may save you from getting rid of 



your little pile. If you have only a 

 wife and she is of the right sort she 

 can help you a good deal and -earn her 

 keep, but I don't advise you to get mar- 

 ried with that idea in view. The old 

 girl is liable to kick over the traces when 

 it comes to living in poverty row. A 

 successful business man can always find 

 a wife; in fact, he has the pick of the 

 bunch as a rule. It may take you from 

 five to ten years to firmly establish your- 

 self but you ought to be nicely fixed by 

 that time. Then you can think about the 

 wedded bliss business. 



Some other time I'll hand you a hot 

 one on ' ' The Evils of Cut Prices for 

 the Beginner." Irving Gingrich. 



ROSES NOT FLOWERING. 



What can be the cause of the follow- 

 ing : 



Dwarf roses, low budded stock, were 

 potted in pots about the middle of No- 

 vember and were put in cold frame and 

 were kept from hard frost. They were 

 hauled in the greenhouse the middle of 

 January and kept on 45 degrees from 

 the start and afterwards up to 60. They 

 grow vigorous, but do not flower. Some 

 of them have grown as high as three to 

 four feet. P. B. 



Your treatment of the dormant H. P. 

 roses seems to have been almost perfect 

 and why they did not flower is not easy 

 to explain. 



AVhen first potted, instead of plunging 

 in a cold frame where the wood and 

 eyes were exposed to many changes of 

 temperature, it would have been much 

 better to have laid them on their sides 

 out of doors and to have covered pots 

 and canes with four or five inches of soil. 

 This method was fully explained in the 

 paaes of the Eeview last October and it 

 is sound, as we proved this winter. 



As your roses have grown vigorously, 

 I can only think of one cause why they 

 are blind. Perhaps when you potted 

 them or brought them into the green- 

 house you cut them down too low. The 

 first few eyes will make a vigorous 

 growth, but form no flower buds. Judg- 

 ment and experience can alone teach you 

 the right height to prune. W. S. 



SOIL FOR ROSES AND CARNA- 

 TIONS. 



I am building a new plant for carna- 

 tions and roses and I want to ask in 

 regard to the soil. I did not prepare 

 any soil for my houses last fall, as I 

 had no intention at that time of build- 



ing. My soil is good and black and I 

 want to know how I can fix it for my 

 benches now to get good results from 

 my carnations and roses this winter. 

 Do you think I can make up a compost 

 now that would make good soil for car- 

 nations and roses by putting old rotted 

 manure and sand with it? How about 

 lime and bone meal? I can get a lot 

 of sandy loam if that will help. I have 

 been watching the Review of late to 

 see if I could find anything on this sub- 

 ject, but was unable to do so, 



C. F, R. 



You do not say whether your soil is 

 in the shap^ of sod. If it is, it would 

 be advisable to put it in a pile at once, 

 for, although there are not many weeks 

 to spare before you should plant roses, 

 yet some amount of rotting would take 

 place. In building a compact pile you 

 should add a wheelborrow of manure 

 to every three loads of sod. In the case 

 of rose soil do not use old rotten manure 

 • — it is of little use, except mechanic- 

 ally. Procure cow manure that is very 

 slightly decayed. If your black soil is 

 inclined to be heavy so much the better. 

 You need not add any sandy loam. The 

 bone meal can be worked into the soil 

 after the soil is on the bench. Notice 

 how large a space a certain number of 

 wheelbarrow loads go and then add for 

 each load one quart of bone meal or 

 flour. 



There is more time with the carnation 

 compost because from the middle to the 

 end of July is the earliest that is de- 

 sirable unless you adopt the all-inside 

 culture and it is now too late for that. 

 Far better let them have a few weeks 

 in the field. If your "good black soil" 

 is heavy it would be well to add a half 

 of sandy loam and a fourth or fifth of 

 the old rotten manure. There is no need 

 to compost the material. Draw it up to 

 the greenhouse door and mix it there, 

 using the same amount of bone flour as 

 you do for the roses. 



On a visit to the great Dale estate I 

 once noticed a very methodical plan of 



