20 
THE FOSS HEATON GLAD GARDENS, CRESTON, IOWA 
10,000 bulbs, there being 20 rows 100 feet long, or 2,000 feet of row. This will 
supply from 600 to 800 dozen blooms, or more, as some bulbs send up more than 
one spike. The blooming season can be made to extend over several weeks’ time by 
planting at intervals. Keep the quality high in your stand by careful cultivation, 
plenty of moisture, planting only large bulbs, and offering for sale no inferior 
spikes. 
BULB VITALITY 
It is a well known practice in stock breeding to see that the animals selected 
for breeding purposes shall rustle for their living, giving them food containing more 
of the muscle and body building elements and less of the fattening substances. The 
same thing is true with Glad bulbs. Too much fertilizing and too much watering 
is a real injury to the bulbs if you are raising them for the bulb crop and not for 
the flower. You must not pamper your growing bulb stock if you want them to 
produce the best flowers for the following year. Too much stem and flower growth 
is a harm to the bulb growth. Some growers even disbud their Glad plants, but this 
hardly seems necessary. Simply do not overdo the matter of plant food and water¬ 
ing. 1 never use fertilizer of any kind on my growing cr^p, and I have noticed that 
the bulbs of a dry season have the most pep for the following year- I use the 
good Iowa black soil containing all the natural elements, and depend on the natural 
rainfall, and the bulbs are clean, solid, high-crowned, and full of pep. 
ABOUT SIZES OF BULBS 
The price of a bulb, as well as its value for the production of its flower, varies 
according to its diameter. The quality of the spikes from No. 1 and No. 2 sizes is 
about the same, about the only difference being that No. l’s send up more spikes. 
For forcing in the greenhouse No. 1 size is the best to use. No. 3 bulbs usually send 
up only one spike, and therefore for many varieties this size gives the finest spike, 
because all the energy of the plant and bulb is concentrated in the one spike. The 
same is true to a somewhat lesser extent for the No. 4 size. But from No. 5 and No. 6 
bulbs the spikes are definitely inferior. In fact, in many varieties most growers do 
not get No. 6’s to bloom at all. However, it is the latter two sizes that produce the 
main crop of bulblets, which fact gives them a definite value. Since for most varie¬ 
ties only a small part of the bulblets will sprout, the value of bulblets is only a frac¬ 
tional part of the value of the bulbs. 
THE BULB’S BEST YEAR 
From a planting of bulblets the crop of bulbs at digging time will be mostly No. 5 
and No. 6 sizes for nearly all varieties, although certain strong varieties will have 
quite a few larger sizes. This crop of bulbs, called planting stock, will develop into 
No. l’s and No. 2’s the second season, and will have a crop of bulblets. These second 
year bulbs are what are called young bulbs. They are high-crowned and vigorous. It 
is called the bulb’s best year. Although the bulb will renew itself from year to year 
thereafter indefinitely, yet the later bulbs are not so peppy. They are more or less 
flattened out, and hardly ever produce bulblets, while the spikes of blooms are not 
so good. 
BULBLETS 
These little offshoots in among the roots of a bulb at digging time will with prop¬ 
er care develop into bulbs themselves, that will bloom true to the mother bulb in 
every particular. They are the means by which a variety is propagated, the increase 
being very rapid in all standard varieties. 
In their wild state in their native haunts of South Africa, when the plant dies 
down following the blooming period, the bulblets must remain in the ground through 
the dormant period of several months. The bulblet kernel is small and tender, and 
the ground is hot and dry, and the hard husk, or shell, is therefore a protection. 
When the growing season again arrives, not all of these bulblets will sprout, many 
of them remaining over for succeeding seasons. This again is a provision of Nature 
for survival in case of accident to the growth above ground. These are reasons why 
bulblets are usually hard to germinate. We must find methods of overcoming these 
tendencies. 
The usual practice is to soak the bulblets for several days just before planting, 
the longer the better. The sprout will be better still if the bulblets have not been 
