The best fertilizer is bone meal. My own practice is to scatter this 
broadcast in very early spring allowing the rains to carry it down in 
close plantings and cultivating it in where the plantings are new. 
Do not use manure. It conduces to rot. 
Iris rot and Iris borer, a disease and a pest that have thrown many 
enthusiasts into a near panic, can be controlled. 
The Iris borer is the larva of a small dun moth {macronoctua 
onusta) which lays its eggs in the autumn at the base of the foliage. 
These eggs hatch in spring — in North New Jersey early May. A 
light covering of dry trash, straw or leaves raked over the bed or 
row and burned in very early spring destroys the eggs. Quickly done 
no bad effects have resulted from this practice of several years' dura- 
tion in my own garden. 
Iris rot, soft with offensive smell, appearing on a rare or precious 
plant is best controlled by scraping to sound tissue with an old tea- 
spoon (the scrapings to be burned) and pouring on the wound a spoon- 
ful or two of the standard solution of mercuric chloride (corrosive 
sublimate) i-iooo, being sure that the whole injured surface is disin- 
fected. 
The quickest, easiest and cheapest method with plants not val- 
uable on which it appears, is to dig and burn the whole thing, or bury 
it so deeply it will never rise again. I prefer the burning. 
Watchfulness in sanitation, destroying all affected parts of plants 
or vegetables — carrots, beets, tomatoes, parsnips, cabbage, etc., are 
hosts for the same bacillus — and care in hygiene, keeping plants in 
resistant condition by free admission of sunlight and air to the 
rhizomes with good drainage will do much to keep the trouble in 
hand. Mrs. C. S. McKinney 
The growers of Gladioli tell us that the Gladiolus of the future Notes on 
will be a far finer and better flower both as to form and color than Gladioli 
even the exquisitely beautiful ones we now love and admire. As a cut 
flower it is known to many, but is used by far too few of us as a val- 
uable addition to our color scheme in the garden. Though the period 
of bloom is undeniably short, this can be overcome by planting in 
succession, as the plants take little room even at their bloom time. 
We are told that the Gladiolus is native to both South and Tropical 
Africa, and that onQ variety grows wild in England, where it has been 
cultivated in English flower gardens since 1569. Varieties appear and 
sink into oblivion, only to be replaced again and again by still finer 
productions, but there are many standard species which have been in 
vogue for years, such as America, pale rose pink; Helley, a good salmon 
pink; Panama, the companion to America, but of a deeper pink; and 
Pink Perfection, a beautiful large variety of a soft sahnon shade. The 
best lavender is without doubt Badenia, though it is not a strong 
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