GUIDEBOOK FOR 1935 
Page 21 
for a minute or two, depending on the woodi¬ 
ness of the stem. Try scarlets with tritomas, 
orange sorts with Marigold Guinea Gold. Try 
white and cream gladiolus with pale blue 
delphinium. 
Popularity of whites and creams is increas¬ 
ing by leaps and bounds, both in flowers and 
in house furnishings. This is a good thing for 
you to remember when ordering your glads. 
INSECT PESTS AND BULB DISEASES 
This subject, fortunately, has again be¬ 
come relatively unimportant to the well in¬ 
formed, who have learned that simple, pre¬ 
ventative measures are better than compli¬ 
cated and sometimes ineffective curative 
measures. 
Likely, your bulbs are clean and need none 
of these treatments, but we are presenting 
this information for those who may need it. 
Inspect your bulbs before planting. If 
doubtful looking, remove entire husk, though 
the husk does function to ward off from the 
planted bulb frost, fungus diseases, grubs 
and wire worms. Do not expect all bulbs to 
look spotlessly clean. They come out of dirt, 
you know, and have other troubles to contend 
with such as occasional bruising near the root 
base, from speed necessary in the removal of 
hundreds of thousands of old bulbs and roots. 
Some bulbs develop bruise marks just from 
non-moving contact in the trays. Commer¬ 
cial grading to sizes does a lot of marring, 
though such injuries affect the salable appear¬ 
ance of the bulb rather than its ability to per¬ 
form. Some growers wash their bulbs or part 
of them at digging time, causing some pitting 
of the bulb surface. Also, napthalene and 
ethylene may cause some gray and brown 
abrasions in some susceptible varieties. How¬ 
ever, we have a very high reputation for 
delivering bulbs rather free from defacement 
from any cause. Variety of colors does not 
necessarily betray mixing of varieties. For 
instance, our Salbach Pink bulbs have always 
come through storage looking about all colors 
of the rainbow. A few specks of disease spots, 
wire worm injury or scab may be gouged out 
without the slightest harm to the plant pro¬ 
vided the bulb retains a good eye and root 
base. Cutting out these segments only cuts 
away that much food to start off the new 
plant. Best dust the cut surface with pow¬ 
dered charcoal. Next best common sulphur 
or at least dry until bleeding stops before 
planting. You may do these things any time 
during the storage period, too, or just rely on 
corrosive sublimate treatment to clear them 
up. 
A plump bulb of 134 inches diameter has 
plenty food to start production of a show 
specimen spike. If the bulb is 2 inches or 
more in diameter it may have two or more 
prominent eyes or sprouts, indicating that 
it will make as many stalks and spikes. Now 
this one bulb cannot be expected to make two 
or more spikes of the same show specimen 
quality it would produce if held to a single 
eye and spike. If you want to bring renewed 
youth and vigor to your bulbs and beat the 
other fellow, just disbud the bulb, i.e., gouge 
out all eyes except the most prominent one, 
just as you gouged out the little specks of 
scab or disease, dusting as before. 
In the hot, dry season of 1930, rather 
generally across the northern, and eastern 
states and southern Canada, a small thrips 
insect which had theretofore been too few in 
number to cause enough damage to blooms to 
warrant active steps towards their elimina¬ 
tion, multiplied greatly, as did most other 
insects. 
Many growers, unaware even of the nature 
of the damage to their blooms, attributed it 
to the dry soil and wilting heat and care¬ 
lessly left the foliage on their bulbs when 
dug and otherwise allowed the thrips to fly, 
blow, crawl or shake onto the bulbs, bring¬ 
ing them into storage where they proceeded 
to feed on the bulbs, leaving russett brown 
spots wherever they were able to penetrate 
and laying eggs right in the tissue of the bulbs. 
There the eggs hatch and start further life 
cycles if the place of storage is above 50 de¬ 
grees or, if under 50, remain unhatched until 
perhaps the heat of June or July reaches 
down to the planted bulb. If infested thus 
the young remain inside the crevices of the 
plant, substantially out of reach of insect 
sprays. 
Unfortunately, the first light infestation 
from without usually comes late in the season, 
perhaps not even injuring the latest blooms 
and escapes notice. By getting a few intro¬ 
duced into your storage and then not using 
any control methods, you face a possible 
total loss of the next year’s bloom. 
Some growers took measures to kill the 
insects which got into their bulbs in storage 
but failed to kill the eggs and unwittingly 
helped disseminate them about the country. 
Note. CYANOGAS kills the insects but not 
the eggs. If you can maintain a given incu¬ 
bating temperature and use repeated gassings 
so often during the period of incubation that 
further egg laying is prevented, you might 
make a 100% kill of the eggs as they hatch. 
Also, this is a very deadly gas to humans. 
Your neighbor may get some of these bulbs 
and spread his crop of thrips over your lot. 
For your own protection, tell him how to rid 
his bulbs of the pesky thrips or, better still, 
give us his name and address and we will 
inform him. 
If your neighbor persists in his careless dis¬ 
semination, plant your bulbs several weeks 
ahead of him and get your blooms before the 
thrips get too numerous. 
For several years we have been among the 
foremost disseminators of information relat¬ 
ing to this subject in numerous publications 
in U. S. and Canada, firm in the belief that — 
the sooner discussed, the sooner eliminated. 
