12 FERTILUERS AND 
the winter storage. Some of these root masses are 
hardly tubers at all, and dry out to the point of death 
before spring. Plants forced severely for the produc- 
tion of immense exhibition blooms often have only 
exhausted tubers left, that should never be sold, as 
they are more or less, sometimes entirely, unfit for plant- 
ing the next year. 
Blooms that are one-sided, only half developed, 
are on plants that have ' 'flowered out" and are nearing 
the end of their seasonal growth, or are in soil that has 
had all its plant food used up, and the plant and the 
blooms are actually starving to death. Top dressing, 
if applied soon enough, will revive the drooping energies 
of the plant and profuse flowering will result. 
With dahlias fertilizer requirements vary with the 
variety, and practice has proven that blooms are greatly 
improved by judicious applications of manure or com- 
mercial preparations after the flower buds have formed. 
The low growing, bushy Kaiserin A. Victoria, and the 
taller John Wanamaker, exceptionally profuse bloom- 
ers, must have a liberally fertilized soil, or the plants 
will become exhausted by their wonderful flower pro- 
duction. Countess of Lonsdale, that readily shows 
more than fifty open blooms on a single plant, naturally 
requires plenty of food. Pompons should never receive 
fertilizer, except bone meal for flower production, and a 
little potash for strength of tuber. The charm of these 
little beauties is in their diminutiveness. They are 
naturally profuse bloomers. 
