184 FRITZ BAHR'S COMMERCIAL FLORICULTURE 



such patronage really doesn't need worry about how good or bad 

 his Christmas or Easter business turns out. A steady demand all 

 through the year is what counts, and to supply this sort of demand 

 you must grow on or carry as great a variety of stock as possible. 



Your customers may get tired of Calendulas by August, but 

 let a couple of months go by and they will be just as eager to get 

 them as ever, and that holds good with almost any of the so-called 

 annuals. The retail grower with a bench full of Sweet Peas starting 

 to flower in December has as valuable crop as any Rose he could 

 grow, and so with other things. Even on a small scale you can 

 have Schizanthus in full flower for Christmas and sell them all with 

 a margin of profit as great as, or greater than you could hope to 

 reaUze out of a bench of red Carnations which you have tried to 

 force by holding the house at 55 deg. And so it goes until Spring. 

 You wUl have a hard job making a customer take Roses when by 

 the end of February you can cut your Lupines grown in a house at 

 48 deg. ; and when the Stocks come into flower in March, everybody 

 wants them. ' 



It isn't that any of these annuals ever can replace either Roses 

 or Carnations, or that those growing Roses or Carnations suc- 

 cessfuUy and making money at it should grow annuals instead; 

 but it will pay those who cannot, for instance, very weU handle Roses 

 or ship them so they wiU arrive in good shape, to go more heavily 

 into annuals. Let them be one of your main crops. Almost all of 

 them can get along in a cool house, and even if you don't cut a 

 great many flowers during Midwinter you are bound to make up 

 for it later on. 



Annuals for Growing Under Glass 



Perhaps the list of annuals grown extensively under glass 

 comprises only about a half dozen varieties, yet there are a good 

 many more which can be grown successfully. The following list 

 doesn't embrace even half of those available — only those that are 

 best known. It is up to the florist who is interested in annuals 

 to constantly keep on looking for something new or out of the 

 ordinary and when he finds it to try it out. You cannot get too 

 much of an assortment and it always pays to bring forward some- 

 thing the other fellow hasn't got. Never before was the public more 

 anxious and ready to pay well for the unusual; it is just a matter for 

 you to supply it. Let us start the fist with the Antirrhinums (Snap- 

 dragons). Although they really belong to the perennials and are 

 usually grown from cuttings, we treat them as annuals, and usually 

 class them as such. Other annuals are: Ageratum, Calendula, 

 Galliopsis, Candytuft, Centaurea (among these the double Corn- 

 flower, both the blue and the pink, Sweet Sultans and C. suaveolens), 



