F i B R HABT, 1 !> 1 



THE (JAR DEN MAGAZINE 



21 



Souvenir de Gustave Douzon. the "red sunflower" 

 dahlia. The single-stem system is the only one for 

 good long-stemmed flowers with these giant decora- 

 tives. Two (or three) root-sprouts are as many as 

 should be allowed 



plant will grow from an axillary sprout 

 sent out at the first pair of leaves. 



The sprouts may be from an inch to 

 four inches long for rooting; they start 

 better if they are taken off before they 

 develop leaves and so increase their 

 evaporation. They should be pricked in, 

 right side up, in firm clean sand, kept 

 fairly moist, with or without bottom heat, 

 and stand in full light after three days, 

 with no glass over them. Early in April 

 — about the time when hyacinths are in 

 full bloom in sheltered beds on the south- 

 east side of the house — I am accustomed 

 to cut a third crop of sprouts from the 

 forced roots indoors and prick them in 

 between the hyacinths out in the cold 

 ground; and they root as well as do any 

 set in bottom heat. The basal tissue of 

 the sprout just at the point of junction 

 with the "collar" is amazingly ready to 

 make rootlets at any temperature that 

 does not fluctuate much; and the fatter 

 the original sprout, the greater, generally, 

 is its vitality in root-making when thrown 

 upon its own resources. 



The cuttings, once rooted, begin to 

 throw one or two long thick roots laterally. 

 I have had a 3-inch stem with one 6-inch 

 and one 2-inch root. For this reason they 

 cannot be grown long in the propagating 

 sand, or they will tangle and break each 

 other. If tangled, they must be plunged 

 in water and washed free of sand and of 

 each other. They may then be potted up 

 in small pots of ordinary earth; or if the 

 season is far enough advanced I plant them 

 at once in the garden and cover up on 

 chilly nights at first. 



The original pot roots, if grown four or 

 five in a small flat box, will have to be 

 washed free of each other before planting 



out. This does not annoy the dahlia at 

 all if the rootlets are given reasonable 

 care in handling and planting. Roots 

 started in individual pots may be jarred 

 out and set like a florist's geranium that 

 you buy in the market; and like the 

 geranium, by the end of April will be 

 conspicuously pot-bound. It is advisable, 

 though not necessary, to wash out, or 

 otherwise unwind, some of the long white 

 roots of these pot-bound plants; if you 

 do not trouble to do it, the dahlia can soon 

 replace them with others just as good, 

 sprawling off hungrily through the soil 

 in all directions, while the pot-bound core 

 remains small and of no account in the 

 centre. In other words, root-tissue in the 

 dahlia — in the spring months particu- 

 larly - — has all the nine lives of a cat. 

 And now some words as to the subse- 

 quent management of the dahlia: 



1. Planting — Manure in the hills where 

 the plants are to grow, not in the 

 whole piece of ground to be planted. 

 Give a peck of stable manure and a tea- 

 cupful of bone meal to each hill. Work 

 into the soil under — not touching — the 

 tuber. 



Set a stout stake at each hill, firmly 

 planted, and at least five feet out of the 

 ground. Plants expressly catalogued as 

 "dwarf" should be set in an outer row of 

 the bed with 3^-foot stakes. (Cactus 

 varieties Britannia, Standard Bearer, T. G. 

 Baker, for example, begin to bloom at 

 two feet and rarely get above three and 

 a half.) 



Plant one tuber to a hill, laying it 

 horizontally, with the sprout end toward 

 the stake. Cover two inches deep, or 

 less if the ground is stiff. No fertilizer, 

 sods, or decaying weeds should touch the 

 tuber, for they harbor mildew and attract 

 cutworms and wireworms. Insects and 

 fungus always attack a tuber at the sprout 

 end. If a tuber shows blue-mold when 

 you are ready to plant it, sprinkle it well 

 with powdered sulphur. 



2. Growth — Keep all plants growing 

 rapidly. Do not allow any side shoots 

 till the plant is eighteen inches high. 

 Grow it tree form with one straight trunk. 

 After eighteen inches, leave one additional 

 sprout, pick out the next five in the leaf 

 axils as fast as they show; then leave 

 another and pick out five; and so on. 

 Keep the joints of the main stem long and 

 brittle by forcing the sap to a few points 

 at once. This stimulates roots, gives 

 large heavy foliage, and enables the plant 

 to grow vigorously through sudden hot 

 weather and drouths. Only when a plant 

 has three or four pounds of root system 

 should it have to sustain a large branching 

 head — ■ that is to say, by the middle of 

 August for most varieties. 



Keep the main stem and branches al- 

 ways erect, by cloth ties. It is not an 

 exaggeration to say that no first class 

 blooms, and few blooms of any kind, ever 

 grow on a branch which has fallen down 

 and grown horizontally more than three 

 or four days. A bent branch will send up 



pairs of erect sprouts at every leaf-joint. 

 No leaning dahlia ever does its best: 

 the flowers arc slow in growth, short 

 stemmed often pallid or lop-sided. Also, 

 an erect dahlia will live through twenty 

 windstorms, where a leaning plant breaks 

 with two. 



After June 15th, allow each plant to 

 send up, from a joint near the ground, or 

 preferably from the "collar" underground, 

 one sprout. Treat this as a secondary 

 trunk, keeping it erect, rubbing out side- 

 shoots, etc., just as with the main stem 

 when young. 



About August 5th or thereabouts, gen- 

 erally after a rain, the plant will branch 

 again from the bottom; train one more 

 of these sprouts. Two more may be 

 allowed in September on a strong plant, 

 especially if you are giving nitrate of 

 soda in water weekly through the latter 

 part of the month. But on all these 

 secondary trunks five sixths of the side- 

 sprouts must be kept cleaned out. On 

 all the upper branches five sixths of the 

 side sprouts should be rubbed out when 

 very small. A three-fold crotch, branch- 

 ing at the next level into nine more 

 branches, divides the sapflow too greatly, 

 dwarfs that bough, and grows a spinach- 

 like head of small leaves closely overlap- 

 ping, instead of bearing flowers. This 

 is a common affliction of dahlias; it is 

 variously laid to "disease," " hot sun" and 

 ' ' dry weather. ' ' Pruning is the preventive ; 

 and pruning is the remedy, too, if a plant 

 is otherwise healthy. Remember that 

 dahlias flower on new wood. 



Cactus dahlia. Phil May. A free bloomer, but 

 inclined to harden in the stalks and grow dwarfish 

 unless very thoroughly pruned. Good open growth 

 is shown here, in spite of two weeks of intense heat in 

 July. The plant has three secondary sprouts from 

 the root, beside the single stem originally allowed 



