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1454 



The Weekly Florists' Review* 



Mabch 28, 1907. 



MULCHING. 



To protect the feeding roots that are 

 now ne&r the surface from strong sun- 

 shine, and to keep the benches from 

 drying out too quickly, they should now 

 get a liberal mulching of rich compost. 

 The soil, if the plants have been doing 

 good work, will by this time be much 

 exhausted, and, as the spring growth is 

 now on, they will require some fresh 

 material to work on. By mulching now 

 rfthe Diooms can be kept up to size for 

 quite a long time, even in hot weather. 



The compost should consist of two 

 parts decomposed cow manure and one 

 part good rose soil. To this should be 

 added fifteen or twenty pounds of desic- 

 cated bone meal to each cubic yard of 

 compost, the whole to be thoroughly in- 

 corporated and put on the bench one 

 inch thick. 



Passing the compost through a screen 

 of an inch mesh makes it more easily 

 spread, covering the ground more uni- 

 formly and making it more assimilable 

 than if put on in a rougher state. This 

 mulching, with the aid of liquid feed- 

 ing, should keep the soil in good condi- 

 tion till planting time. Tor Beauty 

 benches, which should now be making 

 a heavy growth, this is indispensable, as 

 without it many of the buds will fail to 

 reach a salable size. 



Those buds on extra strong canes of 

 Beauties, which, by reason of the soft- 

 ness of the wood, fail to develop prop- 

 erly, should be picked off instead of cut- 

 ting the stem. At the base of these 

 buds will be found one or more buds, 

 which in five or six weeks W'ill make 

 excellent flowers. 



Young Beauty stock should be fumi- 

 gated once a weeK and syringed with 

 force twice every bright day. Keep all 

 buds picked off and give the plants 

 plenty of rbom on the benches. 



Kibes. 



PRUNING HARDY ROSES. 



Winter is at an end for another year 

 and the time is not far distant when we 

 may reasonably expect spring weather 

 and among a multitude of other duties 

 which fall to the lot of the florist is 

 the pruning of hardy roses, not only for 

 liimself, but in many cases for numbers 

 of his customers. This is work which 

 no novice can attend to properly. None 

 but an experienced hand should do it, or 

 from the pruning more harm than good 

 may be the result. 



Hybrid perpetuals are usually pro- 

 tected by being earthed around with 



soil, or by manure and leaves. The first 

 method furnishes much the better pro- 

 tection. After clearing away the soil, 

 which can be done any time after the 

 frost leaves the ground, preferably from 

 the beginning to the middle of April, 

 except for the warmer states, all weak 

 shoots should be taken out entirely and 

 the more robust ones cut down to with- 

 in six or eight inches of the start of 

 the preceding year's growth. T"his hard 

 pruning will make the plants break 

 strongly. Lighter pruning may be 

 adopted if an earlier crop of small 

 flowers is desired for mass effect, but 

 the quality cannot approximate that of 

 the well cut back plants. Hard prun- 



Our surplus is all sold. 



m 



is a hustler and an order getter^ 



which we are much pleased 



with. 



V4LDESIAN NURSERIES. 



Boslict N. C, 



March 23, 1907. 



ing makes it much easier to protect the 

 lower, current season's buds when win- 

 ter covering is needed. 



Hybrid teas and teas are becoming in- 

 creasingly popular, and there is little 

 wonder, for they are persistent bloomers, 

 especially the first named. As a rule 

 they need much heavier protection than 

 the hybrid perpetuals. Some growers 

 lift them and bury overhead in a trench. 

 Others place in coldframes, while in 

 more favored locations earthing up with 

 soil and a covering of spruce boughs an- 

 swers very well. The vigorous canes 

 of these roses may be shortened back to 

 one-third of their length. More moder- 

 ate ones only need the thin ends cut off. 

 Weak ones are better removed entirely. 

 Some judicious pruning may also be 

 done in summer. After a crop of flow- 

 ers has faded, trim the shoots back a 

 little. If flowers are cut as they open 

 thig will not need doing. 



Old stock of any of the tea roses 

 grown under glass make satisfactory 

 beds if pruned back well and watered 

 occasionally. We have seen Bridesmaid, 

 Kaiserin, Carnot and other roses make a 

 really excellent show treated in this 

 way, and it is worth while trying a bed 

 of them. 



Ramblers, such as Crimson, Philadel- 

 phia, Swieetheart, Farquhar, Dorothy 

 Perkins, Lady Gay, Carmine Pillar, De- 

 butante, Mrs. Egan and others of like 

 nature, should merely have weak and 

 dead wood removed and laterals short- 

 ened back to three or four buds each; 

 also any of the preceding year's flower- 

 ing wood which may not have been taken 

 out after the blooms faded last sum- 

 mer. The same applies to all the hybrid 

 sw-eetbriars usually known as Lord 

 Penzance's briars. These are well 

 worth a place in any garden. ' The 

 flowers have a large range of color. 



Bedding roses, like Clothilde Soupert, 

 Hermosa, Maman Cochet and its white 

 form, Gruss an Teplitz and Baby Ram- 

 bler should be cut back about half way. 

 Have all the dead wood removed and 

 weak laterals shortened back well. They 

 are satisfactory varieties to grow and 

 give a maximum of bloom for a mini- 

 mum of care. Beds kept mulched with 

 old manure and occasionally hoed over 

 with old flowers cut off as they fade will 

 bloom all summer long. C. W. 



ROSE QUEEN OF SPAIN. 



In a January issue the Review printed 

 the following paragraph from the Lon- 

 don Garden: "Undoubtedly the rose of 

 tI-.<? year is the beautiful variety. Queen 

 of Spain. S. Bide & Sons, of Farnham, 

 are to be congratulated upon this, their 

 first introduction among roses, and as 

 they have begun so well it is to be hoped 

 they will continue to add to the collec- 

 tion roses of equal merit. Many who 

 saw the variety when first staged at the 

 national rose show thought it deserved a 

 gold medal, and so it did. Mr. Bide, 

 junior, informed the writer that Queen 

 of Spain was raised from Antoine Ri- 

 voire crossed with another variety, but 

 what that was he could not say. The 

 color is pale flesh tyith a darker center, 

 the tint being much intensified upon 

 plants one year old. It possesses the 

 valuable quality of erect stems, so that 

 .the handsome flowers are borne well above 

 the foliage, a trait it inherits from its 

 maternal parent. It has especially good, 

 lasting flowers, a fact fully demonstrated 

 by the freshness of the blooms at t^e 

 end of the two days' show at Holland 

 House. No one can deny that fully 

 three-fourths of the novelties introduced 

 at the present day are of a very flimsy 

 character, although charming in color, 

 and, as garden roses, they are excellent, 

 but there is room for many more of the 

 type of Queen of Spain. ' ' 



The flower is very full and of excel- 

 lent form. It has fragrance of Souvenir 

 de la Malmaison and will be tried by a 

 considerable number of American grow- 

 ers next season. In sending the photo- 

 graph reproduced in this issue Bide & 

 Sons say that the king of Spain has just 

 manifested his appreciation of the cour- 

 tesy intended by naming the rose for 

 his queen by passing them a liberal order 

 for plants. 



Red Hook, N. Y. — A car of glass has 

 arrived here on a community order for 

 several violet growers who will add to 

 their glass this season. 



