The Weekly Florists' Review. 



Mai 7, 1908. 



ty-fives, each bud in the bunch being in 

 the same stage of development; if any 

 are farther open than others, bunch 

 them by themselves. Wrap each bunch 

 in paper, being careful to see that the 

 paper does not go down into the water 

 in the pails in which the bunches are 

 placed for storage, else it will draw up 

 water and rot the buds. As little time 



as possible should be lost between cut- 

 ting and storage. The storage tempera- 

 ture should be as near freezing as pos- 

 sible and keep out actual frost. Work- 

 ing along these lines some shippers will 

 turn out perfect stock, while others, less 

 observant and less painstaking, will fail 

 to secure results that will make the 

 speculation profitable. H. O. 



SOIL AND 

 THE FLORIST 



s 



The Need of Organic Matter. 



The discussion of the availability of 

 plant foods in soils (see page 13 of the 

 Review for December 26) and of the 

 principle underlying proper land drain- 

 age (see page 9 of the issue for April 

 30) brings me to consider the importance 

 of organic matter in soils. 



If a high productive capacity of fields 

 is to be secured and maintained, then, 

 in some manner must all soils be given 

 an openness of structure approaching 

 that possessed by our coarse sandy 

 types. The factor of paramount impor- 

 tance in securing prime tilth, or the best 

 possible structure, is an abundance of 

 organic matter deeply and thoroughly in- 

 corporated in the soil; and with this 

 must always be associated ample under- 

 drainage, which fortunately is generally 

 the case where structure is right. For 

 ordinary field conditions this incorpora- 

 tion of organic matter must be secured 

 through deep plowing, which aims to 

 turn under all waste refuse and occa- 

 sionally green and stable manures. Go- 

 ing with this practice there must be an 

 intelligent rotation of crops, which in- 

 cludes the legumes, to accumulate nitro- 

 gen from the air and fix it deeply in the 

 soil in the structure of their tubercle 

 and root growth; which includes also 

 the grasses, with dense root systems 

 which both tend to deeply and finely di- 

 vide the soil by the close ramifications 

 of their roots and to make the granules 

 flo formed more rigid by the cementing 

 action of substances rendered soluble by 

 the carbonic acid transpired through 

 their roots and which accumulate in the 

 granules by diffusion and become pre- 

 cipitated there as the soil is deeply and 

 thoroughly dried by the action of the 

 roots in supplying the plant with water. 

 The cereal, vegetable, fiber and sugar 

 crops exert but a feeble structure-build- 

 ing efifect upon the soil. They tend, 

 rather, to weaken the soil structure by 

 the removal of the soluble plant food 

 ingredients which have been accumulated 

 in them, thus rendering them structural- 

 ly defective and deficient in immediately 

 available plant food. Crops of this class, 

 therefore, are chiefly the earning agen- 

 cies, while the grasses and the legumes 

 are largely restorative, but may also be 

 earning crops as well. It must be re- 

 membered, however, that their restora- 

 tive effect lies wholly in their power to 

 mend structure and to add nitrogen to 

 the soil. Other plant food elements they 



A paper bv Prof. F. H. King, of Madison. 

 Wis., read before the Congress of the National 

 Council of Horticulture. 



never add, but may, to some extent, help 

 to make them more available, and thus 

 permit larger yields to follow them, but 

 whose removal, followed by no return to 

 the soil, hastens its ultimate exhaustion. 



A Practical Illustration* 



Composition first and structure second 

 are the master factors which determine 

 the productive capacity of fields. I will 

 close by illustrating this by the practice 

 of composting soils preparatory to their 

 use on the benches in forcing houses. 

 With the practical man his first choice 



•d 



The editor is pl« 



when a Reader 



jnreaents his ideas 



on any subject treated in 



fVP^ 



As experience is the best 

 tefusher, so do "we 

 learn fastest by an 

 exotiansre of experiences. 

 Many valuable points 

 are brouKht out 

 by discussion. 



Good penmanship, spelling' and gram- 

 mar, though desirable, are not neces- 

 sary. Write as you would talk when 

 doing your best. 



WX SHALL BK GLAD 

 TO HKAR FROM TOU. 



is a rich sod, his second a rich, mellow 

 loam. To the soil he adds from a third 

 to half its volume of good stable manure, 

 perhaps supplemented with phosphates, 

 lime and potash. The whole is thor- 

 oughly mixed, put in good moisture con- 

 dition and given opportunity for fer- 

 mentation under conditions of frequent 

 turning. By this treatment he secures a 

 soil whose structure is ideal and which 

 is at the same time carrying a heavy 

 charge of plant food in highly available 

 form. A strong blue-grass or timothy 

 sod is itself a guaranty of thorough and 

 strong crumb structure. Because the vol- 



ume of the soil is small, it is impera- 

 tive that the root system be brought in 

 effective contact with the whole of it, 

 that the available surface shall be aa 

 large as possible and that the soil with 

 which the roots come in contact shall bo 

 heavily charged , with essential plant 

 food. The decay of the manure in con- 

 tact with the soil grains leads to their 

 becoming highly charged with plant food 

 in water-soluble form. Quite Ukely, too, 

 at the time of planting, the manure and 

 other substances will be supplemented by 

 sodium nitrate. 



It seems idle to think that soils like 

 this, selected at the start because they 

 are in evident good condition and rea- 

 sonably productive, should require such 

 excessive amounts of manure and fertil- 

 izers to simply neutralize toxic prin- 

 ciples which may be present in them, 

 and we may be reasonably certain that 

 we are here dealing simply with an 

 abundance of plant food in highly avail- 

 able form, placed under ideal conditions 

 for the crop to put itself in touch 

 with it. 



THE READERS' CORNER. 



Moles in the Greenhouse. 



A. Caspers' experience with moles is 

 somewhat unusual. According to natu- 

 ral history the mole is no vegetarian. 

 Bats are more likely to be the cause of 

 the damage described. Should you have 

 moles working in your benches, a few 

 castor beans inserted in their runs will 

 make them vacate. J. E. Bobertson. 



WHITE FLY. 



Please tell me how to kill or drive 

 away the little white fly. My green- 

 house is full of them. They sit on the 

 leaves and in a short time the leaves 

 become yellow and drop off the plants. 

 What shall I do to get rid of themf 



M. L. 



In the first place, you should never 

 have allowed your greenhouse to become 

 "full" of the white fly. You can keep 

 a house clean with less expense and 

 with less work than you can clean it 

 up after it is badly infested. You 

 should fumigate regularly with one of 

 the nicotine extracts; light fumigation 

 is ail that is necessary to keep the house 

 free, if a start is made when it is not 

 badly infested. You will now have to 

 fumigate several times and quite heavily 

 to destroy the insects. 



Get a can of one of the nicotine ex- 

 tracts and follow directions. Perhaps 

 the easiest way, if steam is on, is to 

 apply the nicotine to the hot pipe with 

 an ordinary oil can. An advertisement 

 in a recent Beview said: "When the 

 heating system is steam the compound 

 can be applied on the steam pipes with 

 an engineer's ordinary oil can, with the 

 opening of the tip a little larger than 

 a needle; use twenty to twenty-five tea- 

 spoonfuls to each 100 running feet 

 by simply running the spout of the can 

 along the top of the pipe, always walk- 

 ing away from the fumes." Wietor 

 Bros, say they use this method, simply 

 painting the preparation on the pipes 

 just before the steam is turned on. If 

 you cannot now close up your house 

 with the steam on you can vaporize the 

 nicotine over lamps. 



Hydrocyanic acid gas is a powerful 

 agent to employ against white fly, or any 

 other breathing thing, but it is danger- 



