Page 2 
THE GLADIOLUS FANCIER’S GUIDEBOOK FOR 1934 
INTRODUCTORY 
A GAIN, this booklet is planned for you. 
It adopts your point of view. It gives 
you hitherto unpublished facts upon 
which to base your own conclusions. It is 
not cluttered up with fictitious values, since 
none of the varieties offered are our own 
originations or under our control and we 
have to compete against the entire world 
market, item for item, to get a nickel’s 
worth of your flower bulb expenditures. 
Our price list easily discloses that. 
A small portion of the information in this 
booklet is repeated from last year. In such 
instances, the data is still so valuable that 
we cannot possibly leave it out. 
Even if you are an advanced amateur 
“glad” enthusiast or a commercial grower, 
the chances are that half of the varieties 
you have heretofore purchased turned out 
to be disappointing in some respect. If the 
seller had only told you that this variety 
often crooks, that one easily wilts, the other 
one is very short, or fades, or has tiny 
florets, or only holds two or three of them 
open at once, or faces and spaces badly, or 
is of irregular performance, or propagates 
poorly, or that it is never a first prize win¬ 
ner in recent major shows, perhaps not even 
second or third raters, — you would have 
saved that money, been spared the dis¬ 
appointment and, for less money, obtained 
first raters with all the pleasure that goes 
with having them. 
It is our aim to convert the timid novice 
into the experienced, advanced amateur who 
knows quality of bloom when he sees it and, 
better still, can grow the outstanding blooms 
which are the envy of his friends. By at¬ 
tending to simple fundamentals you may 
have from your own garden such magnificent 
blooms that you need not fear to enter them 
in competition in your garden club, county 
fair, state or regional shows, yes, even in the 
great National Exhibition of the American 
Gladiolus Society. 
Likewise, it is our aim to aid our custo¬ 
mers, both amateur and commercial, in the 
saving of unnecessary expense and experi¬ 
mentation. Skill and care alone will not 
make plants yield rich and abundant flowers. 
The varieties must be inherently capable of 
it and the bulbs healthy and the plants in¬ 
sect pest free to permit their best perform¬ 
ance. Printers’ ink can do a lot but it can¬ 
not make a good variety out of a poor one. 
Disappointment can be minimized by 
leaving to the highly trained gladiolus 
specialist the experimentation and cash in¬ 
vestment necessary to try out all the new 
offerings of the many hybridizers. Those 
who know the quality of competition in 
national, state and regional shows have 
come to realize that inferior sorts rarely 
win. 
Also, it is well to leave to the federal, 
state and university entomologists, patholo¬ 
gists and to gladiolus specialists cooperating 
with them, the determination of best usages 
for the control of insect pests and bulb and 
plant diseases. Experimentation by others 
with poisons, poisonous gases and with in¬ 
secticides, the component parts of which are 
not understood by the user, and with un¬ 
approved methods of fertilization, usually 
leads to trouble. 
FLOWER APPRECIATION GROWING 
During the last two years, several of the 
great seed houses, for the first time in their 
history, saw their sales of flower bulbs 
and seeds exceed the vegetables. The in¬ 
creasing number of flower shows, the rapid 
rise of the garden club movement, the turn¬ 
ing of people to a more simple social life, 
the general increase of leisure time, the 
well known relaxation of nervous tension 
while puttering in the garden have all led 
to this rapid growth of flower appreciation. 
Undoubtedly, gardening is becoming in¬ 
creasingly important as a recreation. 
LEAD YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS 
— HOW TO DO IT 
Simple as can be. Inexpensive, too. 
Plant healthy, young bulbs of the large 
size of varieties currently winning first 
prizes in the major shows of the world. 
Copyright 1934 
HERBERT O. EVANS 
Chairman Executive Committee, American Gladiolus Society 
Treasurer, National Commercial Gladiolus Growers' Association 
Chairman Executive Committee, Ohio State Gladiolus Society 
Trustee and Secretary, Horticultural Foundation of Cleveland 
Member, Canadian Gladiolus Society; Member, New England Gladiolus Society 
Member, Mahoning Gladiolus Society 
Farm, S. O. M. Center Road, SOLON, OHIO P. O. Address, BEDFORD, OHIO 
