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THE GLADIOLUS FANCIER’S 
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you hitherto unpublished facts upon 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 winner in recent major 
shows, perhaps not even second or third 
raters, — you would have saved that money, 
been spared the disappointment and, for less 
money, obtained first raters with all the pleas¬ 
ure 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 attend¬ 
ing 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 customers, 
both amateur and commercial, in the saving 
of unnecessary expense and experimentation. 
Skill and care alone will not make plants 
yield rich and abundant flowers. The varie¬ 
ties must be inherently capable of it and the 
bulbs healthy and the plants insect pest free 
to permit their best performance. Printers’ 
ink can do a lot but it cannot make a good 
variety out of a poor one. 
Disappointment can be minimized by leav¬ 
ing to the highly trained gladiolus specialist 
the experimentation and cash investment 
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 in the last few years have come 
to realize that inferior sorts rarely win. We 
list only such recent first prize winning varie¬ 
ties. If they cannot win they are not good 
enough for us to list. “Has beens” and 
“never were winners” are left for the other 
growers to list, with their vivid descriptions. 
You do not have to sift them out carefully 
from our offerings. We have tried to lead 
you out of the usual labyrinth of a listing of 
hundreds of varieties where it would be next 
to hopeless to differentiate the best from the 
commonplace. By our method of listing the 
latter are automatically sifted out. 
We have no knowledge of the existence of 
any other gladiolus catalog in the world that 
even closely approaches so exclusive a list of 
prize-winners. 
Also, it is well to leave to the federal, state 
and university entomologists, pathologists 
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 insecticides, 
the component parts of which are not under¬ 
stood by the user, and with unapproved meth¬ 
ods of fertilization, usually leads to trouble. 
Copyright 1935 
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 
<DciA A 167713 ' ■ TE8251S35 
