134 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
at small expense. Two or three bulbs 
may be purchased, and the pollen trans¬ 
ferred from flower to flower when they 
bloom. Seedpods full of seeds will be 
ripe in a few weeks from which hun¬ 
dreds may be grown by the amateur. 
Three years ago I had a single bulb; 
I sowed the seeds it produced in a raisin- 
box of rich soil and gave them only or¬ 
dinary attention till the next summer, 
when I had 200 small bulbs to plant out. 
They have made a well-filled bed about 
4x20 feet and though only half of them 
flowered this year, the bed was a blaze of 
bloom, as many as 150 flowers being 
open at once, many of them of great size 
and varying in color from nearly white . 
to deep scarlet and crimson. 
My vegetable gardening experience has 
taught me that Florida soils must have a 
steady artificial water supply to yield sat¬ 
isfactory returns of either flowers or 
other products. If flowing wells can be 
had and clay is near the surface, subir¬ 
rigation is all that can be desired, but 
only a few can have such facilities. Now 
that good gasoline engines can be had for 
$30 or $40, they are as necessary and no 
more costly than a good fence is in the 
cattle and hog country which still com¬ 
prises most of rural Florida. 
Ten minutes time a day and maybe a 
cent’s worth of gasoline will make almost 
any Florida desert blossom as the rose, 
beside supplying an abundance of water 
for household purposes, and this should 
become as much a matter of course in ev¬ 
ery Florida homie as is a cook-stove or a 
set of bedroom furniture. 
