548 



The Weekly Florists' Review* 



January 10, 1907. 



the light, when a short time suflBces for 

 them to open the spike and gain their 

 color and green foliage. 



A heated shed would suit them just 

 as well as a covered glass-house. The 

 cost of treating them in this manner is 

 slight, including labor, heating, house- 

 room and all incidentals; hardly one 

 farthing each, or £1 per thousand. The 

 average cost of the bulbs to buy in from 

 Holland is 70 shillings per thousand, 

 making the total cost to place them on 

 the market £4 10 shillings, and many 

 thousands are disposed of at an average 

 of £6 per thousand, which leaves a fair 

 working profit. One nursery I recently 

 visited was growing over 40,000 in this 

 -.way and not one per cent was a failure. 



J.B. 



DAHLIAS. 



^hat is the proper time to propagate 

 •dahlias from cuttings? If they were 

 ■propagated this winter would they make 

 :good plants and bloom well the coming 

 -summer? L. D. 



You can propagate dahlias the first 

 part of March and on through April 

 and they will make the best of plants, 

 bloom early and have fine flowers. Many 

 growers prefer the plants from cuttings 

 to the tubers or roots. Old roots are 

 placed on a bench, where there is a lit- 

 tle bottom heat, on an inch or so of soil, 

 and a little soil is scattered on and be- 

 tween the roots. Soon eyes will break 

 from the tops of the tubers. If these 

 are cut off at a joint and inserted in 

 2-inch pots and the pots plunged in the 

 propagating bed they will soon root. 



W. S. 



NEPHROLEPIS EXALT ATA 

 SPORTS. 



Nephrolepis exaltata Piersoni was dis- 

 tributed in the United States in 1903 as 

 a splendid decomposite sport from the 

 so-called Boston fern, and evoked great 

 admiration as a decidedly fresh and 

 promising brake. N. exaltata elegantis- 

 sima followed, 1905, still more finely 

 <;ut, and, finally, so far as present rec- 

 ords are concerned, Messrs. Kochford 

 (October 9, 1906) capped an apparent 

 •climax with the N. exaltata todeaoides, 

 already described. In this connection it 

 is a curious fact that ten or twelve years 

 ago, long before Piersoni appeared, Mr. 

 Eoupell, of Koupell Park, sent the writer 

 a number of bipinnate fronds of N. ex- 

 altata, all unfortunately barren, which 



had appeared on a normal plant in bis 

 locality. This plant, however, either re- 

 verted or was lost sight of in some way, 

 for, despite our urgent advice to sow 

 and our prediction (since verified) that 

 a capacity thus indicated might be the 

 forerunner of very fine decomposite 

 types, nothing more was heard of the 

 particular plant. — Gardeners ' Chronicle. 



WHEN TO PLANT ASTERS. 



When should I plant asters for out- 

 door flowers? L. D. 



The first planting of asters is usually 

 done as soon as the ground is dry and 

 friable and danger of severe frost is 

 past. Ours is such a big country and 

 has such wide degrees of latitude that no 

 arbitrary date will answer. This query 

 comes from Kansas, where winters are 

 short and sharp and spring early. There 

 is possibly as much difference in climate 

 between Kansas and Minnesota as there 

 is between Copenhagen and Madrid, or 

 St. Petersburg and the Crimea, where the 

 olive grows and fruits. From what we 

 know of the climate of Kansas, should 

 say anywhere after April 20 would be 

 safe to plant asters. . W. S. 



Greenhouse Seating. 



EXPANSION TANK. 



In your valuable paper there often ap- 

 pears in your queries on heating the fol- 

 lowing question : How high shall I place 

 my expansion tank above the highest 

 point in the heating pipes, and to what 

 part of the system shall I connect the 

 same? The answer is almost always the 

 same, i. e., place your tank ten or fif- 

 teen feet above the highest point and 

 connect with the main return near the 

 boiler. 



Now, the writer has no desire to set 

 at naught the advice given by your heat- 

 ing engineer. But, having had experi- 

 ence in hot water heating, under almost 

 all conditions, for a number of years, 

 he has never been able to see that it 

 made any difference in the circulation, 

 whether the expansion tank was ten 

 inches or ten feet above the highest 

 point. That is altogether a matter of 

 convenience, and has no bearing upon 

 the eflSciency of the heating plant; so 

 long as it is above the highest point and 

 large enough to take care of the over- 



flow, due to expansion in water through 

 heating. 



As to where the connection should be 

 made, I have learned that it makes no 

 difference whether it is with the main 

 flow or main return, or any part of the 

 boiler or pipes, as far as the circulation 

 goes, with moderate firing. 



Place your expansion tank above the 

 highest point in the system, in the most 

 convenient place, and connect with %- 

 inch galvanized pipe to any part of the 

 boiler or pipes. When it is left as a 

 matter of choice, I always take the pipe 

 to the expansion tank from the top side 

 of the most convenient main flow pipe I 

 can get at. Coils fed from this pipe will 

 work more smoothly in hard firing than 

 when the aircocks alone are depended 

 upon to keep the pipes free from air and 

 steam, incidental to heavy firing. In 

 fact the coils above the tank connection 

 will rarely need opening, as everything 

 passes out through the expansion tank, 

 no matter how hard you fire, the water 

 being left free to circulate unobstructed 

 by steam or air. And you take no chance 

 of steam gathering at the high points 

 and backing your water out through the 

 expansion tank, shutting off the circula- 

 tion, as it sometimes does when your 

 tank connection is on the return pipes, 

 or near the bottom of the boiler, should 

 the boiler be a little large for the work 

 it has to do, and heats up to the steam- 

 ing point, perhaps, when the fireman is 

 not about to open aircocks. Any one 

 doubting this can quickly be convinced 

 by giving it a trial. 



The only object the writer has in pub- 

 lishing this is, that it may come to the 

 notice of some one who is at sea on this 

 question. There is nothing more per- 

 plexing to the grower than a faulty heat- 

 ing system — and the woods are full of 

 them. R. G. Milpord. 



TROUBLE WITH HEATING. 



In reading S. C. Templin's heating 

 record in the Review of December 20, 

 I could not help but think of the differ- 

 ence between his case and my own. 



I have a northeast and southwest house 

 40x100, with a combination of a short- 

 span and a long-span roof; southwest 

 gable glazed. Along the northeast end 

 is a potting shed thirty-seven feet, leav- 

 ing three feet exposed to the northwest. 

 The west wall has 20-inch glass, with 

 a few ventilators. The east wall has 

 30-inch glass, also a few ventilators; 

 continual ventilation on top on east and 



New Greenhouse Plant of Bertermann Bros. Co., lodianapolis, at Cumberland^ Ind. 



