March 28, 1912. 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



Good Ezamplec of the Several Ways in Which Pot Lilies may be Offered for Easter. 



of special wreaths, baskets, ribbons or 

 crockery, display these conspicuously 

 at this time, when your establishment 

 is sure to be full of people, just as 

 you would casually make a suggestion. 

 If the store has a suit of Sunday 

 clothes, put it on during Easter week; 

 it will pay in the long run. 



Hugo Schroeter. 



FINISH TO EASTEB PLANTS. 



Where Some Growers Fail. 



Nothing so plainly shows the diflPer- 

 ence between the experienced and the 

 inexperienced plantsman as what is 

 termed "finish" to flowering or foliage 

 plants. While the term is as good as 

 could be selected, it is not, perhaps, 

 wholly descriptive, but it is sufficiently 

 so to be well understood. A plant lacks 

 finish if it is growing in too large' a 

 pot to look well. This shows that the 

 grower expected it to do better things 

 and in some way has missed it. The 

 experienced grower will always strive 

 to get the most possible out of a certain 

 size of pot, for he knows well that, 

 when the plant comes into the retailer 's 

 hands, the smaller the pot the better he 

 is able to use it for furnishing, for bas- 

 ket or vase work, or even for retailing 

 directly as a specimen. 



A Vital Difference. 



Take the case of azaleas for Easter. 

 It may be said that an azalea, when im- 

 ported, has just so many buds to open 

 and all that is necessary is to place the 

 plants in heat at a certain time and to 

 send them out when ready. But why 

 does one man always turn out an at- 

 tractive plant, neat and trig looking, 

 with good color of flowers and foliage, 

 and another send out a plant with half 

 of the flowers past their best and the 

 foliage dull and wilted f It is due to 

 lack of knowledge as to how to put 

 the finishing touch to them. It is like 

 comparing a suit of clothes of the 

 "hand-me-down" type with one from 

 an up-to-date tailor. 



Slap-dash Growers. 



Doubtless there are many growers 

 who can not put this finish to their 

 plants; they can hardly tell the differ- 

 ence between the finished and the un- 

 finished product. But these are in the 

 minority. What causes the trouble with 

 most growers is a kind of slap-dash 

 treatment of their plants. They go 

 into the house where they are growing 

 at a certain time every day, put on the 

 air, throw around the water and casu- 



Erica in an Odd Basket. 



ally look over the plants as a whole. 

 TliM<^<will not take the trouble to look 

 at toe plants individually— to note that 

 such a one has too little room for proper 

 development or that another is get- 

 ting more than its share (or less, as the 

 case may be) of water, or that there are 



weak specimens struggling along in 

 a hopeless effort to get their fair share 

 of light and air from bigger fellows 

 that are elbowing them out of exist- 

 ence. 



The Grower's Sixth Sense. 



Then, again, in the matter of feeding. 

 If we are to get the best possible out 

 of a certain size of pot that only holds 

 so many cubic inches of soil, theri 

 some feeding has to be resorted to and 

 a kind of sixth sense is one of the 

 attributes of the successful grower, 

 who can "see through a ball of soil" 

 and know, by a plant's appearance 

 overhead, what its roots are like below. 

 Only such a man can tell just when 

 to begin feeding his plants for best 

 results. Only such as he can tell when 

 to place his lilies in a cool house to 

 retard them sufficiently to give that 

 hard, vigorous appearance that denotes 

 finish in these popular plants, or how 

 much heat to allow to avoid having to 

 resort to forcing tactics at the end. 



The Grower Who Knows. 



A grower may produce a coleus in 

 heavy soil in a cool, shad^ house, but 

 the grower who knows will give that 

 coleus a finish by planting it in light, 

 rich soil, watering freely and keeping 

 up a hot, moist atmosphere, buoyant 

 with sunlight all the time it is growing. 

 If the subject is a croton or a pandanus, 

 he will still give it the light, heat and 

 moisture, but the soil will be heavier 

 in the case of the croton, to insure 

 proper consolidation of the wood, and 

 not too rich for the pandanus, to pre- 

 vent loss of the white variegation. 



These are only a few points, but they 

 serve to show how important it is for 

 the grower who wishes his plants to be 

 well finished to be ever watching these 

 small and seemingly unimportant de- 

 tails, for upon their being duly noted 

 and carried out depends much of the 

 success of the plantsman. B. 



Manchester, Mass. — Axel Magnuson, 

 the Bridge street florist, is the possessor 

 of a handsome new automobile. 



