THE SOIL 93 



outdoors, but you can do nothing with it under glass, no matter 

 how much manure or sand you mix with it. 



Soil which you obtain from the compost heap will usually grow 

 anything in the way of bedding stock. The man who has the space 

 should save everything in the way of so-called sweepings, thrown 

 out bulb flats, old plants, etc., etc. When left long enough in the 

 compost heap or pile they will all come in useful some day. 



COMPOSTS 



In the modem slaughter house not a single thing is wasted, but exactly 

 the opposite is true with the average florist. If we today ran our 

 business the way we will some day, the only things we would actually 

 have to find a dumping place for would be broken glass and clinkers 

 —and both of these make excellent material in a concrete mixture. 



A GOOD sized space covered with a compost pile is a paying 

 -^*- investment for every retail grower. Such a pile consists of, 

 or is composed of, so-called wastes of the greenhouses, correspond- 

 ing to what the slaughter house sells as tankage, which is simply a . 

 mixture of waste scraps of meat, blood and bone. As this makes an 

 excellent fertilizer, so can the compost pile be used to great ad- 

 vantage. 



There is hardly a day in the year when the florist hasn't some- 

 thing to throw out, if it is only the sweepings of the potting shed. 

 Everything outside of coal ashes, clinkers, broken pots and glass — 

 anything that in time will decay and turn into soil or help to create 

 a porous soil — should go toward making up a compost pile. 



Fig. 29. — A Well-made Compost Pile. Good potting soil is necessary no matter 

 what kind of stock you grow, and a fair-sized pile should always be on hand to 



draw from 



