58 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
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February, 1912 
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Carnation Growing for Everyone 
By Mary W. Mount 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and others 
ARNATION culture offers one of the most 
interesting and remunerative occupations to 
the amateur in floriculture. The plants 
thrive best in a dry atmosphere, and require 
less moisture than almost any other green- 
house flowers. ‘The temperature in which 
Carnations are grown is considered a healthful one to work 
in, and the odor is stimulating and invigorating. ‘Then, too, 
the worker is benefitted by sun baths through glass roofs 
and the tonic properties of radium in the earth constantly 
handled, making Carnation raising healthful as well as 
delightful. 
It is claimed that a temperature of 60° Fahr. should never 
be exceeded in a Carnation house, and that 50° is the mini- 
mum night and 70° the maximum day temperature that the 
plants can stand without injury. Most growers endeavor 
to preserve a temperature of from 54° to 55° at night, and 
60° to 65° in the day time, using more heat on a cloudy day, 
when the sun does not furnish all, and 
sometimes more than the warmth re- 
quired. To the necessity of having heat 
evenly distributed in a greenhouse is 
added that of securing light as nearly as 
possible the same as that outdoors. 
Changes in temperature have everything 
to do with promoting or retarding the 
development of a flower; with making a 
long, strong calyx or a short, weak one, 
that splits and lets the petals fall rag- 
gedly as soon as the blossom unfolds. A 
good calyx vastly enhances the market 
value of a flower, and one must learn 
how chill and sudden heat affect it. Two 
main essentials in growing Carnations 
are plenty of ventilation and careful 
watering; they cannot endure moist 
earth or poor drainage, and require less 
‘water in Winter than in Summer. 
With a little greenhouse, an amateur 
may keep his first year’s expense below 
The lovely Carnation known as the Jessica 
$100, or if he spends $7 to $14 for completely sashed 
coldframes, covering 3 by 12 to 24 feet, he should be 
able to raise enough Carnations in one season to defray the 
cost of establishing a small greenhouse the next. At least 
a thousand plants may be contained in a house 50x18 feet, 
the yield from which is ten to seventy-five blossoms to each 
plant in the season, lasting from October until June. Twenty- 
five to thirty blossoms on terminal stems is expected from a 
properly cared-for plant, while the modest output of ten 
blooms to a plant will yield the owner of a thousand plants 
ten thousand Carnations. According to size, variety and 
color, these bring from $1 to $5 per hundred wholesale, and 
$1 to $15 a dozen retail, from which may have to be de- 
ducted the commission man’s fifteen per cent. Nearness to 
market enables a grower to take advantage of high prices, 
make two or three trips a day to market, and obtain from 
any city all the manure wanted for cultivating purposes at 
merely the cost of hauling. Flowers must be shipped with 
regularity to retail customers, and should 
be shipped in quantities to save expenses. 
A box larger than a trunk, and contain- 
ing 120 dozen blossoms, can be shipped 
from states adjacent to New York to 
that city for forty cents, and shippers 
find that flowers remain fresh for days 
if placed in a cool cellar for twenty-four 
hours before shipping, with their stems 
plunged deep in clear water. When se- 
lecting a place convenient to market, the 
grower must consider whether the soil of 
that locality is a sandy loam, in which 
Carnations thrive best, and, if economy 
is necessary, whether the site offers a 
spot protected from north winds, where 
less fuel will be required for heating pur- 
poses and an even temperature may be 
more easily maintained. Out of doors 
the plants will bloom from August until 
the infliction of the first hard frost, if 
they are protected from heavy winds. 
most profitable occupation 
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