GLADIOLI. 



263 



addition to fine flowers, be is also able to keep up a healthy- 

 stock year after year, and this is more likely, so far as my experi- 

 ence goes, to be attained in a good holding loam rather than in 

 any other kind of soil, at all events so far as the drier and 

 warmer counties of England are concerned. In the more 

 northern counties, where the rainfall is excessive and the climate 

 less warm and sunny, some modification of the foregoing opinion 

 might be necessary, and a soil of a lighter nature might be 

 found more suitable. But it is a matter of history how, when a 

 clever horticulturist like the late Mr. Standish attempted to grow 

 these flowers on the light sandy soil of Bagshot, he utterly failed to 

 increase or even to keep up a healthy stock, and their cultivation 

 had to be abandoned. Monsieur Lemoine, on the other hand, has 

 told us in his interesting lecture, delivered in this hall, how well 

 he succeeds with his gladioli in his nursery at Nancy, where the 

 soil is stiff clay, and from which he distributes his bybrids in such 

 rapid succession. And although it does not appear that the ganda- 

 vensis hybrids flourish there on stiff clay, they succeed admirably 

 with us near Cambridge on a soil closely approaching clay, but 

 where the drainage is good and the rainfall light — an average of 

 about 18 inches a year. , 



Closely connected with soil comes the question of manure. 

 Excessive manuring is extremely harmful, and is likely to 

 generate a disease with which the whole genus is afflicted more 

 or less, according to the nature of the cultivation given it. Of 

 this disease I will speak later on ; but when I see recommended 

 layers of six to eight inches of manure, and mulchings of nearly 

 the same, with frequent doses of liquid manure, I cannot help 

 thinking it is greatly in excess of any of the requirements of 

 gladioli in a fairly average fertile soil, and I am sure that a 

 portion of the manure and liquid would be much more profitably 

 employed on some of the gross-feeding kitchen garden crops 

 rather than in encouraging disease among the gladioli. We 

 mostly grow our bulbs, or rather corms, on ground which has 

 been well manured for the previous crop, where, for instance, 

 dahlias or roses have been grown the previous autumn, and this, 

 we find, produces quite as good results as when we specially 

 manured the ground for the gladioli alone. An excess of 

 humus in the soil is distinctly harmful, and the stock will remain 

 far healthier in what is termed clean soil. Our ground is 



