190 FRITZ BAHR'S COMMERCIAL FLORICULTURE 



well-filled baskets and boxes during the Spring months at your 

 greenhouses and you will sell them. 



A lot of people who wouldn't want their lawns cut up with 

 beds are wiUing to have porch boxes filled; again, these can be 

 used to advantage where there really isn't room for beds. 



Suitable Stock for Filling 



Whether it is a hanging basket or a porch or window box you 

 have to fill, the main thing is to have large plants to do it with and 

 these in as small pots as possible. 



A porch box has to be good looking at the time you deUver 

 it. Your customers don't want to be told that the plants in it may 

 be small but that they soon will grow into big specimens; they 

 want immediate effects, and it is that result, which to many means 

 more than anything else, that must be kept in mind in preparing 

 boxes. -' A •; '; 



Of heavy stock and bushy Vincas or Ivies, a few plants will 

 fill a box and make it look the way it should; this result cannot 

 be obtained with small plants, no matter how many you use. With 

 hanging baskets it is the same way. 



The man who has baskets and boxes to fill during Spring cannot 

 do better than to grow on stock especially for that purpose; it pays 

 him to do so. A large, bushy Geranium in a four-inch pot is wprth 

 three or four small ones. If you separate a batch of plants from the 

 general run of stock and give them special attention and plenty of 

 room so as to get them as bushy as possible, you will appreciate 

 them later on. 



There is hardly ever too much space in a basket or box and the 

 plant out of the small pot is naturally the one best adapted to do the 

 filUng with. Frequently, by feeding your plants, you can prevent 

 extra shifting; a Vinca, if allowed to root through the bottom of a 

 4-in. pot, doesn't need a shift. Whatever way you do it, avoid 

 having plants in pots over four inches in diameter. 



How TO Fill a Basket 



In filling hanging baskets for a porch, the main thing is to select 

 plants that can stand the maximum of abuse. Hardly ever do you 

 sell such baskets to a customer where at one time or other during 

 the Summer months they don't get neglected, and with the Uttle 

 soil contained in a 12- or 14-in. wire basket it doesn't take much to 

 ruin the plants. There is nothing quite as hardy for a basket in 

 the way of a trailing plant as the English Ivy — that is, if you can . 

 get enough for the basket, for this Ivy will make it more expensive 

 than Vincas, Glechomas, Maurandias or almost anything else. 



