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8 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



Deckmbeb 3, 1908. 



Wm. Sim, salmon pink, are all good 

 forcing varieties. We would advise plant- 

 ing two rows each of white and pink and 

 wMte, and the remaining row of the 

 other colors. C. W. 



A BAD CASE OF SPOT. 



I do not know that I shall have any 

 violets this season, on account of six 

 weeks of spot. I have had all kinds o£ 

 instructions, but can do nothing with the» 

 spot on my Princess of Wales violets. 

 I have 800 Princess and 350 Marie 

 Louise in the same house. The latter 

 have not been touched with spot yet, but 

 I fear the Princess are ruined, unless 

 they recuperate when the weather gets 

 cooler. Outdoors, in a large coldframe, 

 I had Marie Louise and Dorsetts side by 

 side. In this case the spot just ruined 

 the Marie Louise. I had to pull them 

 up and throw them away. All the Dor- 

 setts remained free from the disease. 

 Now, it will take a wiser person than I 

 to understand such freakishness in spot. 



My plants, many of them, stand with 

 bloom buds stancQng up, but with no 

 leaves to mention, as I took them off as 

 soon as I saw them limp with spot. I 

 feel perfectly helpless in the matter. 



E. A. P. 



This subscriber has my heartfelt sym- 

 pathy, for a good dose of spot, which 

 they have by the description, is most dis- 

 couraging and anything but desirable. 

 As for the "all kinds of instructions," I 

 do not doubt it in the least, and the 

 most exasperating part of it all is that 

 the instructions usually do not amount to 

 anything. If it is a very light touch of 

 spot, one can sometimes pick carefully 

 all leaves that are at all touched and 

 bum them. Then, by giving good treat- 

 ment, you may save them, so as to get a 

 fair crop. But when the attack is at all 

 bad, I would pull them up, "lock, stock 

 and gun barrel," and cremate them in the 

 boiler. And if some of the plants were 

 good and others diseased, I would surely 

 pull and bum the latter, lest the disease 

 spread to the good ones. I would then 

 give the soil a pretty liberal dusting of 

 lime, turn it up and dry it out, and plant 

 some other crop that would do well in a. 

 violet house temperature, etc. 



Yes, not only is spot freakish, but I 

 might add that violets themselves are 

 freakish, and a grower does often run 

 up against things like this that make 

 him feel helpless. Yet, with spot, if you 

 will look back over your treatment, you 

 will frequently, not always, find that you 

 really helped it on by something that you 

 did. Perhaps it was a little check in 

 growth, or a few damp, cloudy days, or 

 closing up tight with a heavy fumigation 

 with tobacco stems. There might be all 

 or part of these, or a combination of 

 some of them, and lo! the next morning 

 finds you with a house full of the dis- 

 ease and your hopes of profits gone in 

 one short night. But such is occasionally 



our lot, and the next day sees the ever 

 cheerful florist up and hustling and pre- 

 paring the house for a crop of some 

 other kind, hoping for the best, and 

 determined never to be caught just that 

 way again, if he knows it. 



R. E. Shuphelt. 



IN A GOLD HOUSE. 



Eor various reasons I would like to 

 turn my violet house into a coldframe. 

 The plants are Princess of Wales violets 

 in solid benches. The house runs north 

 and south and is heated by hot water. 

 The plants apparently are perfectly 

 healthy. The temperature so far has 

 been 40 degrees at night. All days when 

 over 40 degrees outside the top and side 

 ventilators were wide open. I thought 

 first to mulch lightly with old stable 

 manure, then cover with marsh hay and 

 dead leaves and leave the top ventilators 

 open a little; in short, treat the green- 

 house as though it were a coldframe, 

 banking with fresh manure. Then I 

 want to start a fire in time td have a 

 large Easter crop, say in March. I 

 have always kept my pipes full of water 

 all summer. Will ife injure the pipes 

 to leave them empty three months? Will 

 the plants, being now under cover, be too 

 tender for such treatment, and would 

 they be of any use for propagation by 

 cuttings or division? L. D. 



There is no reason why the violets 

 will not carry all right through the 

 winter protected as you have suggested. 

 They have not had sufficient fire heat 

 as yet to make them too tender, al- 

 though it would have been better had 

 none been used. It would be better to 



lay the dead leaves over the plants. This 

 is nature's own covering and cannot be 

 improved upon. Lay the marsh hay over 

 the leaves, letting the covering be per- 

 fectly light. I do not think there is 

 any need of the old stable manure. Of 

 course, even when banked outside and 

 well covered inside, quite a little frost 

 will get to the plants. If your house 

 is a low one, can you not arrange to 

 use mats or burlapping for additional 

 protection outside? Or board shutters 

 without the mats will help considerably. 

 It will not hurt the pipes to have the 

 water drawn off; no other course is open 

 to you. 



Do not remove the covering too, sud- 

 denly. Let the frost thaw out of the 

 beds before exposing the plants. 



Plants grown cold are preferable for 

 propagating purposes to those exposed 

 to fire heat all winter. C. W. 



VIOLETS ON TILE BENCHES. 



The illustrations on page 10 are 

 from photographs taken at the violet 

 houses of J. Vender Linden, Bhinebeck, 

 N. Y., and one of them shows one of the 

 first houses of violets ever planted on tile 

 benches. It will be of special interest 

 to the growers of violets on this account. 

 The honfefe is 24x150 and it will be noted 

 that the plants are strong and healthy. 

 The other house shows a house benched 

 in the ordinary way, with solid beds, in 

 which the growth also is excellent. Mr. 

 Vonder Linden is growing 60,000 violet 

 plants ^his season. He is the president 

 of the Growers' Cut Flower Co., recently 

 organized and opened for business in 

 New York city. 



Table Decoration by Schindler & Co.* New Orleans. 



