Mat 21, 1908. 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



)5 



Estabfishtnent of Ludwig Stapp, Rock Island, III. 



ILUDWIG STAFF'S FLACE. 



The Tri-Cities Florists ' Club is one of 

 the most successful of the trade organi- 

 tions of the middle west, for in its mem- 

 bership it numbers practically all the flo- 

 rists of the Tri-cities, as they are knowp, 

 Moline and Eock Island in Illinois, and 

 Davenport in Iowa. These prosperous 

 cities afford an excellent business for a 

 score or more of growers and retailers, 

 and the greenhouse establishments there 

 are most of them fine examples of their 

 kind. All the growers do more or less 

 retail business, but some of them also 

 wholesale a part of their products. While 

 a great variety of stock is grown, the 

 wholesalers grow largely carnations, and 

 this flower'* is almost a specialty at the 

 establishment of Ludwig Stapp, at Rock 

 Island, which is shown in the accompany- 

 ing illustration. The picture shows a 

 well-kept place and it is interesting to 

 note that Mr. Stapp has within the last 

 few weeks placed an order for the mate- 

 rial for a much larger house than any of 

 those shown in the picture, which is to be 

 erected this spring. Business is good 

 enough with him so that he thinks he 

 needs as many more carnations as he can 

 plant in a house 51x160, the first wide 

 house to be built in that section. 



Carnation growers will be especially in- 

 terested in the fact that Mr. Stapp is an 

 advocate of watering the carnation plants 

 while in the field and last summer 

 equipped a plot of ground 60x300 feet 

 to give the plants water without effort 

 whenever they did not get rain. He says 

 he found the watering a great benefit in 

 dry spells, and especially good after 

 planting, particularly when the weather 

 turns dry and windy. In such case he 

 turned on the water after finishing a 

 day's planting and says it refreshed the 

 plants like a shower. Mr. Stapp goes to 

 some little trouble to get his water, 

 pumping it from two wells, one 140 feet 

 deep and the other 200 feet. He drives 

 the pumps with a two-horse power elec- 

 tric motor, pumping into a cistern, from 

 which the water is again pumped by a 

 two-horse power combination pump and 



.^engine such as has been sold to many 

 growers by the Standard Pump & Engine 

 Co., of Cleveland. This forces the water 

 into a large pneumatic tank which gives 

 a pressure up to 100 pounds; but the 

 tank does not hold the pressure above 

 thirty to forty pounds when he is operat- 

 ing more than one line of the watering 

 system. However, as he has the pipes 

 arranged, thirty- pounds ' pressure enables 

 him to cover the ground. 



In piping his field Mr. Stapp ran a 

 1^4 -inch pipe from the greenhouses to 

 the center of the patch. From there he 

 carried two lines' to the right and two 

 lines to the left, each 150 feet long, 

 Each line can be cut out with a valve and 

 controlled with a swivel wheel, but all 

 the lines could be operated at once if 



water could be supplied a little faster by 

 the tank. It would then take a 2-inch 

 flow, or 2 14 -inch, to feed all the pipes at 

 once. In the lines the first fifty feet are 

 1%-inch pipe, the next fifty feet 1-incb 

 pipe and the last fifty feet %-inch. Mr. 

 Stapp thinks it would work better if he 

 had the first seventy-five feet 1^4 -inch. 

 The Wittbold nozzles are ten feet apart, 

 sixty nozzles on the 600 feet of pipe. 

 After Mr. Stapp gets his carnations off 

 the field he uses the land for a fall crop 

 of lettuce and spinach. 



Montevideo, Minn. — We are informed 

 that Prof. Shardlow has about given up 

 the idea of extending his conservatory 

 in a commercial way. He has been re- 

 cently married. 



Field Watering System at Ludwig Stapp's, Rock Island, III. 



