LARGE BLOOMS 
tional help needed, except some soot, or wood ashes — 
potash in some form or other, to intensify the color of 
the flowers, and ensure plump, strong tubers. 
Besides containing nitrogen for stem and foliage, 
and phosphoric acid for flower production, stable 
manure, particularly "long manure," (well mixed with 
the straw or hay used in bedding down the animals) is 
exceedingly valuable for the humus (decayed vegetable 
matter) it adds to the soil. Heavy soils need this 
to lighten them, light soils and sandy soils need it to 
hold the moisture supplied by rain or irrigation. This 
stable manure should be old, not fresh, of course, when 
the roots of the plants reach it. On heavy soils it should 
be plowed under in the autumn, or just before the win- 
ter freeze-up occurs. On light, and extremely sandy 
soils, it is better to compost the manure in a pile in the 
autumn, or during the winter, and plow it in when 
spring comes. Composting will advance its decom- 
position, and prevent its "burning" the plants, and 
it will be immediately available. If turned under 
light soils in the autumn the poor retaining qualities of 
the soil will permit some of the plant food elements to 
be washed away by winter rains and lost. On heavy 
soils plow the manure in at the beginning of winter; on 
light soils in the spring. 
Some commercial growers who raise dahlias ex- 
clusively for the sale of the tubers, paying no attention 
to the cutting of the blooms, use no animal manures, 
