272 



FLORICULTURAL SMALL TALK. 



them in rich sandy loam in shallow boxes, which are 

 piled under the benches of the greenhouse. As fast as 

 the benches are emptied by spring sales, the boxes are 

 set up on top and the heat expedites the matter of cal- 

 lusing, so that by May 25 the roots begin to sprout and 

 are ready to sow in trenches two inches deep. After 

 sowing it is necessary to mulch the ground with short 

 straw, sawdust or fine manure to prevent drying out. 

 The roots, in size from of an inch in diameter up to 

 the largest, are cut into pieces about two inches long. 

 The usual way is to cut the roots in the fall and bury 

 them, but this necessitates digging the plants at that time 

 and careful heeling-in and protecting during winter. 



Many small-fruit plants are lost after being received 

 from the growers through want of care in heeling-in. 

 The bunches of 25 to 50 are heeled-in as received, and 

 the result is that the inner plants, having no contact with 

 the earth except at the extreme ends of the roots, dry up 

 and perish. Only a little while ago I heard a beginner 

 berating a nurseryman because some blackberry-plants 

 purchased last spring did not all grow. Inquiry revealed 

 the fact that they were not planted until two weeks after 

 they were received. " How did you care for them dur- 

 ing those two weeks ?" asked the nurseryman. " Why, 

 I buried the bunches in the ground," was the reply. As 

 the bunches were bulky it will easily be understood that 

 more or less of the inner plants had little or no contact 

 with the earth. If the plants were a week en route, and 

 possibly a week in the bunch before shipment, for a full 

 month's time that some of the plants had to depend on their 



own moisture for existence ; and it is no wonder they 

 died. Had the bunches been separated when first re- 

 ceived, it is probable that nearly all would have lived. 

 The same is true of strawberries, raspberries, rose-bushes 

 or anything tied in bunches. 



To-day, February 27, we have been protecting our 

 last year's strawberry-patch from railroad fires. The 

 plantations were partly non-productive last year from 

 frost, and being clean were left to fruit another year. 

 They lay on either side of the railroad, and I feared the 

 dry herbage and last year's mulch would take fire ; so we 

 took a Planet Jr. and a horse, and cultivated two places 

 m each patch, running twice back and forth, making a 

 clean mark that fire could not cross. One mark was 

 about 18 feet from the fence, and the other about 20 feet 

 from that. The second was made in case a strong wind 

 should carry the burning cinders beyond the first. 

 Whatever is burned over in the spring is ruined for fruit- 

 ing that year ; so I take this method to save all but one 

 or two rods wide. I ought to have made this protection 

 last fall, but did not get to it. Strawberry-foliage does 

 not ignite as readily as grass, and the precautions may not 

 be needed, but I once lost a valuable half-acre in this way, 

 and do not want to take any more risks of the same kind. 

 None but owners of land next to a railroad know of the 

 losses and anxiety caused by fires set by locomotives. 

 The matter should receive the attention of our law- 

 makers, that adequate damages may be awarded for 

 crops destroyed. 



Summit County, O. L. B. Pierce. 



FLORICULTURAL SMALL TALK, 



ABOUT OUR MODERN FLORAL BEAUTIES. 



; EAVEN bless the man or woman with 

 a hobby ! For although the world 

 often eyes them askance, to such is 

 the world indebted for many good 

 things of life. Without going 

 farther back than half a century 

 to reach a starting-point for review, 

 see what wonderful changes have 

 been wrought in all the branches 

 of science up to the marvelous exploits of Edison ! 



Floriculture offers no exception, and thanks to the 

 patient skill and persevering efforts of a host of special- 

 ists, it has kept pace with the sister arts in the grand 

 triumphal march of modern progress. 



We are prone from time to time to dwell in pensive 

 retrospective thought on the old-fashioned gardens of our 

 grandmothers, and to indulge in sentimental rhapsodies 

 over their departed glories — glories which were no doubt 

 greatly magnified by our childish eyes. Could those 

 dear, staid old ladies revisit us, 'tis quite safe to say that 

 they would be startled out of that prim propriety of de- 

 portment for which they were so distinguished and 

 would be impelled to display all the vivacious enthusiasm 



of a "girl of the period" on beholding the present 

 splendor of some of their old-time favorites. 



How they would marvel to see their old bee-larkspur, 

 transformed into Lemoine's lovely delphinium, double 

 and single, in every conceivable shade of blue, its 

 beauty enhanced by metallic glints of pink and mauve 

 and other combinations of shades, so daring that the deft 

 and unerring hand of nature alone could make them a 

 pleasing success, all in massive, hyacinth-like spikes of 

 bloom, half a yard in length. They would surely gaze 

 with wonder and delight on Charter's magnificent holly- 

 hock, with its ample crape-textured rosettes in count- 

 less vivid shades, which have taken the place of their old- 

 fashioned meager flowers in dingy colors. Modern magi- 

 cians have transformed or transmuted their ancient pot- 

 marigold into Pure Gold, Meteor, Prince of Orange and 

 other gorgeous forms, to the extinction of their primitive 

 prototype. Nor would they recognize the old China 

 aster, with its narrow range of color, in the superb flow- 

 ers of to-day, so perfect and symmetrical in form, so 

 varied in eccentric type and so lavishly endowed with 

 brilliant colors ; nor the old flower-de-luce, in its pres- 

 ent German descendants, displaying endless freaks in 



