PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllh^ 
GARDENERS' CHRONICLE 
OF AMERICA 
Devoted to the Science of Floriculture and Horticulture 
I Vol. XXI. 
liniiuiiuiHiiiiiiiii 
FEBRUARY, 1917 
No. 2. I 
Things and Thoughts of the Garden 
By The Onlooker 
ALL of us are keen to have or at least to see new 
Roses. It is early to think of the hardy ones for 
an outdoor collection, but for the greenhouse or 
Rose house there is one that thoroughly deserves a place. 
Its name is Alme. Collette ^Martinet, which may be likened 
in the golden ruddy color of its flowers, to Soliel d'Or. The 
latter, however, is a thorny, semi-rambler or pillar rose, 
sometimes grown in pots, where it is quite nice and cer- 
tainly free and vigorous, but Mme. C. Martinet is as 
good a grower as Ophelia and fine for the benches for 
forcing. Picrson of Cromwell, Conn., were advertising 
it in the last issue of The Gardener's Chronicle of 
America. 
At this season we are all anxious to know which are 
the best Carnations, particularly of the new varieties. 
There are many of the old ones that cannot be beaten 
yet, boys. Only a few days ago I saw one of the finest 
benches of the now ancient Mrs. T. W. Lawson that any 
one could wish to see or have. Victory, too, held on a 
long while, and Beacon, Enchantress and Mrs. Ward 
are past the pullet stage of their existence. How many 
thousands of dollars, yes, thousands of thousands, they 
have earned, and how much of joy they have given. For 
a dark pink Lake Ward still. For a bright pink with a 
warm glow of salmon chose Enchantress Supreme. For 
a scarlet, shall we hang on to Beacon or go to Belle 
Washburn or Merry Christmas? The latter are both 
good. For a white Matchless and White Wonder are 
fine, although White Enchantress is popular, too. Yel- 
low — Yellow Prince. There are several good new dark 
crimsons notably Doris and Arawana, but Pocohontas 
holds the field. x\s a rival to Mrs. Ward the new Albert 
Roper calls for consideration. Superb is undoubtedly a 
good pink, and for those who like a two-color flower 
there is Cottage ^laid and Old Gold (yellow, striped 
scarlet). Others will be heard more of. 
Do vou employ any bottom-heat in rooting your 
Carnations? Some growers strike their cuttings cool 
— without any heat — while others like to keep a bot- 
tom temperature of 65 to 68 deg., with atmospheric 
temperature of 52 deg. (day time). In the latter case 
the cuttings root and are ready to be lifted from the sand 
in three weeks or very little more, whereas in the other 
case it takes six weeks to get a nicely rooted cutting. Of 
course some varieties can hardly be got to root at all ; 
Pink Delight is one of the hard ones. There is much to 
be said for quick rooting. You get a kindlier plant, one 
that has not been allowed to get hard at the base, which 
is often a fertile cause of after-trouble, and one which 
grows away freely. All considered, I vote for a wee bit o' 
warmth at the base. 
What is Shamrock ? Nobody actually knows, although 
long and learned disquisitions have been written upon 
the question. St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, 
whose day in the Christian calendar is March 17, a day 
on which Irishmen in America also sport a green Carna- 
tion (a dye is scarce this year!) — St. Patrick is said to 
have plucked a small three-leaved plant and expounded 
from it the doctrine of the Trinity, the Three in One, or 
triune God. Just what that little plant is is the old, old 
question. The majority opinion favors the dwarf white 
Clover, Trifolimn minus. This is die plant whose seeds 
the florists sow and the plant they sell. But it may have 
been the larger Red Clover, Trifolium incarnatum, that 
the priest of old took up. Some have even said that he 
got a leaf of the Water Cress, Nasturtium officinale, from 
the brook. This seems a little far fetched. Let us call 
it the three-leaved Clover. A man asked me the other 
dav if he could sow seeds of it in February and still have 
plants for sale by March 17. The best I could say was 
that he wakened up too late, that around February 10 
the young plants should be at least an inch across, in the 
size of pots called thimbles, in a temperature of 55 deg. 
* * * 
Those who do their gardening by dates rather than by 
the actual condition of the weather make up their first 
hot-bed on March 17 — St. Patrick's Day aforesaid. 
There is nothing in signs of the moon or of any other 
heavenly body, unless it be the sun, that should be taken 
any notice of in our land work. The practice of doing 
certain jobs at the waking or waning (the turn) of the 
moon, is by no means dead. Perhaps the empiricals are 
right ; perhaps not. Science doesn't believe in them, and 
Science is nothing if not thorough. Science orders him- 
self adroitly : he is demonstrable mathematically. Not 
only his ten toes but all his hairs are counted ! Science 
is the opposite of supposition — so-called theory. But the 
middle of March is a good time to make a hot-bed — 
always provided you have an ample supply of horse 
manure to draw upon. Many amateur gardeners in sub- 
urban places cannot get dung. For them the hot-bed is 
a problem worse to solve than any that chess ever gave 
them. \\'here the writer is, in an open suburban quarter, 
the grocers and a large contractor who has horses, stable 
dung is fairly easy to come by — had for the asking, if 
you are on good terms with the grocer and pay your bills 
promptly. There are now double glazed sash frames, 
43 
