988 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



Sbptbmbeb 6, 1900. 



To make this a record-breaker is to stay 

 together, ^here will be lots of time to 

 see the sights of this royal city between 

 sessions. 



BONE MEAL FOR FERNS. 



We have a house of Scottii planted 

 out on the benches. Would you kindly 

 tell me if dusting bone flour over the 

 soil is beneficial or not? We are feeding 

 with liquid cow manure. Should I use 

 bone in the soil when potting them up 

 in the fall? H. C. O. 



A dusting of bone flour on the sur- 

 face of the soil between the plants will 

 be beneficial; also in the compost you 

 use for potting. You can add one quart 

 of bone dust to every bushel of loam on 

 the bed. It should be lightly worked 

 into the soil of the bench. In the com- 

 post for potting it should be thoroughly 

 mixed with the loam. The only danger 

 with this excellent fertilizer is in allow- 

 ing the soil to become dry. Moisture 

 dissolves the bone flour or dust, but dry- 



ness allows it to ferment and burn the 

 roots. 



Used with discretion, it is our most 

 valuable chemical stimulant for vegeta- 

 ble growth. This is not difficult to un- 

 derstand. The whole surface of the 

 earth is filled with the blood and bones 

 of countless generations who have lived, 

 flourished and passed again to Mother 

 Earth. We cannot put our feet down 

 on the ground unless we press on the re- 

 mains of a race gone before. This would 

 be true even if confined to what is known 

 as the human family. How much truer 

 is it if we consider the innumerable be- 

 ings called lower animals who have lived, 

 breathed, been happy and died to enrich 

 the earth for future and more perfect 

 beings. The saddest fact connected with 

 bone that I remember was that a ship 

 took to Liverpool 1,100 tons of bones 

 for the British farmers to use in raising 

 turnips. They were the bones of Turk- 

 ish and Russian soldiers who fell in the 

 battle of Plevna in the Balkan campaign. 



W. S. 



CARNATION NOTES.-WEST. 



Supportingf the Plants. 



You will be wanting to support your 

 carnation plants soon, before they begin 

 to lie over from their own weight. I pre- 

 sume you have finished tttking off all the 

 bad foliage and cleaiied up generally, 

 and applied that /light mulch I men- 

 tioned some weeks ago. ^f you have 

 not done these things, and if you intend 

 to do them, it will pay you to get them 

 done before you pttV, inplace your sup- 

 ports. You can worls-^soinuch freer and 

 faster. Most varieties will need supports 

 only to hold the body of the plants erect 

 for the present. The blooms are not 

 heavy as yet, and the stems will hold 

 them off the soil if the plant is held 

 upright. 



What kind of supports to use is the 

 next question, and you can take your 

 choice of a large variety of devices 

 especially made for this purpose. Some 

 of them show great ingenuity on the 

 part of the inventor, and while one make 



may be fancied by one grower, another 

 grower may prefer another make. Each 

 has its own peculiar feature, but any one 

 of several styles will answer the purpose 

 admirably. For the retail grower who 

 grows a variety of plants, and may find 

 it necessary to pull up a part of a bench 

 at any time before the season is ended, 

 these wire supports are the proper 

 thing. There are no wires to bother with 

 over the benches, interfering with the 

 work or in the way of tall plants. Don 't 

 think you can save money by inventing 

 one of your own and making it for your 

 own use. Those that are on the market 

 are made by machines and are sold 

 cheaper than you can make them. They 

 will last a number of years and will pay 

 for themselves handsomely. 



To the large grower who plants house 

 after house of carnations, and seldom 

 less than a whole bench of one variety, 

 these wire supports are not so indispens- 

 able. In fact, we prefer the method we 

 have been using for a number of years. 

 This is simply to run a wire between 

 each row of plants and along the edge 

 of the bench about the middle of the 

 body of the plants, and tie run strings 



across, one on each side of each row of ^ 

 plants, tied to the outside wires. When 

 these wires are drawn tight and sup- 

 ported about every twenty feet by wood- 

 en cross-pieces, this makes as effective 

 a support as any one could ask for. 



Some growers use a wire ring support 

 to hold up the body of the plant, and the 

 wire and string method to hold up the 

 blooming stems. They argue that you 

 can get to the middle of the bunch so 

 much better to weed and work the soil, 

 but we find that if the plants a,re thor- 

 oughly cleaned and the beds are weeded 

 and mulched before the supports are 

 put in place, very little work is needed 

 by ,the soil until toward spring. We 

 also know that when a ring support is 

 used for the body of the plant it takes 

 much more work to keep the plants in 

 the ring than the other method does, 

 especially if they are large. 



A. F. J. Baur. 



COMMERCIAL CARNATIONS. 



[A paper by John Morgan, of Hamilton, Ont., 

 read before the Canadian Horticultural Associa- 

 tion, at Guelph, August 30.] 



Commercial carnations and their cul- 

 ture is a subject that has been dealt with 

 a great deal by the different trade 

 papers, and what I have to say may pos- 

 sibly be a repetition of what you have 

 already read, but most of the papers on 

 this subject have been chiefly for the 

 benefit of the large grower, and my re- 

 marks are intended chiefly for the small 

 grower. I, myself, am a small grower, 

 and can only give you my experience as 

 such. 



Small Growers Should Have Few Varieties. 



One of the greatest mistakes a small 

 grower makes is in attempting to grow 

 too many varieties; seven or eight varie- 

 ties are ample for the average florist. 

 It is well known that different varieties 

 require different treatment, and the 

 fewer varieties you bother with the bet- 

 ter, providing you have a range of color. 

 Find out which varieties you can grow 

 best, and then stick to them until you 

 are positive there is something better. 

 I do not mean never to try any new 

 variety; by all means try a few of one 

 or two new varieties each year, but do 

 not spend all your profits in buying new 

 varieties, for instead of getting a gold 

 mine, which one would almost expect to 

 get from the description, in most cases 

 you get what is commonly known as a 

 gold brick; the outside or description is 

 very glittering, but the article itself is a 

 fraud and , , imposition. 



Most Profitable Varieties. 



The list of varieties I have found most 





■'Jl 



The Poehltnann Employees Starting for Their Annual Outing. 



