years ago started to sell evergreens 
with bare roots, that part of our bus¬ 
iness would now be in the hands of 
the department and drug stores dur¬ 
ing planting season; but we have edu¬ 
cated our evergreen buyers that an 
evergreen should always be sold with 
a ball of soil on the roots. The re¬ 
sult of this education is evident as 
shown by the absence of evergreens 
in the advertisements of these stores. 
If we could extend this same reason¬ 
ing to the other departments of our 
business and convince our customers 
that roses and shrubs and all other 
nursery stock will grow better, bloom 
better and live longer if moved with 
a ball of soil (growing them in pots 
permits us to furnish them with a 
ball of soil) we will be going a long 
way to eliminate the unfair competi¬ 
tion of these stores. 
Our pot was developed by us in 
our efforts to handle our goods in 
some way that would be different 
than the old out-of-date method as 
generally used by nurserymen, and 
the results have been so satisfactory 
that we are using this year over 50,- 
000 of these pots for our own plant¬ 
ing requirements. In these pots we 
grow perennial plants, roses, vines 
of all kinds, and many varieties of 
the most popular small shrubs; in 
fact, about 80 percent of our line of 
general fast-selling nursery stock is 
g-rown, handled and Isold tin these 
pots. As our stock grown in these 
pots is so easily transplanted in the 
purchaser’s garden (simply rip off 
the pot) we find that most of our cus¬ 
tomers are willing to take the plant 
home and plant it themselves, there¬ 
by making a cash sale and a com¬ 
pleted sale out of what ordinarily 
would mean a delivery, a C. O. D. col¬ 
lection and perhaps end with our hav¬ 
ing to plant the item for our cus¬ 
tomer, free. Growing plants in pots 
produces a better plant than when 
grown in the field because we can 
better control the watering, the fer¬ 
tilizing and the spraying, and by re¬ 
peated moving of the plant we can 
develop a much more symmetrical 
plant that can be grown in the field, 
and all of this can be done in much 
less space than is required in field 
planting. 
Flower Shows Aid Sales. 
Our selling season begins about 
March 15 and continues throughout 
the entire spring, summer and fall, 
and as the different plants come in 
bloom we hold our flower shows, first 
the lilac show, the rose show, crape 
myrtle show, clematis show, and hy¬ 
drangea show. Our roses (we sold 
28,000 at retail in 1935) are in bloom 
all summer, and while we have our 
first big rose show in late May and 
early June we cannot, of course, ad¬ 
vertise a continuous rose show 
throughout the entire summer and 
fall. People would soon tire of that, 
so we advertise the other shows as 
the respective plants come in bloom, 
but roses being our main line our rose 
gardens are always beautiful and ev¬ 
ery visitor before leaving has ample 
opportunity to go through our gar¬ 
dens and they usually go home with 
at least a few roses in their car, and 
we enjoy the tinkling of our cash reg¬ 
ister bell when their money comes in 
our till. 
We believe handling roses and 
other plants as outlined here offers 
the only solution to the troubles of 
the nursery business as it stands to¬ 
day. This new system of handling 
our goods has been successful in our 
nursery and I know it will be suc¬ 
cessful in yours. We, of course, do 
not recommend the abandonment of 
the sale of dormant plants in the 
early spring. We sell about 20 per¬ 
cent of our stock dormant, but we do 
depend on our potted stock for the 
main part of our year’s profit, be¬ 
cause after May 1 we have the busi¬ 
ness all to ourselves, as by that time 
discontinued their nursery depart¬ 
ments. 
The process of potting and growing 
different kinds of plants and shrubs 
is essentially the same with perhaps 
some minor changes of not much con¬ 
sequence, so in dealing with the sub¬ 
ject “Handling Roses and Other 
Plants in Pots” I will tell you in de¬ 
tail how we handle our roses. 
Essentials of Success. 
Good plants, good soil, and a suit¬ 
able pot or container are the three 
essentials to good roses and satisfied 
customers. A cheap, poor, scrubby 
rose plant, in spite of all the care and 
coaxing it may receive, is still a 
scrub and never will be anything but 
a scrub; so, therefore, we emphasize 
the fact that first of all a good strong 
No. 1 plant is the key to success in 
growing and selling roses. 
We plant in our Cloverset rose pots 
only No. 1 rose plants. Our stock 
comes from Oregon and California. 
We make up our potting soil a year 
ahead, making it up in ricks 20 ft. 
wide and 100 ft. long, using succes¬ 
sive layers of 2 ft. good pasture top 
soil and 1 ft. cow manure until our 
rick is about 8 ft. high. A thorough 
watering of the finished rick will 
cause it to burn and settle to about 
6 ft. high by the following spring. At 
potting time, which here in Kansas 
City is about March 20, we add to 
each truck load (about IV 2 tons soil) 
50 lbs. 5-8-6 commercial fertilizer, 
10 bushels rotted cow manure, and 
10 lbs. hydrated lime. It is then run 
through our soil shredder and 
ground as fine as possible. Let us 
add that speed in getting the roses 
into the containers is the important 
thirig on our minds at this time. We 
want all our roses in full bloom for 
our rose show about May 20 and our 
spring rush will soon be upon us. We 
use 8 potters and 10 helpers and pot 
up about 2,000 per day. 
The pot is placed on the potting 
bench, straightened out, care being- 
taken that the bottom tabs are in 
proper place. Then about 1 in. of 
soil is placed in the bottom. (We use 
fire shovels for handling the soil). 
The rose plant, which has been cut 
back to about 6 in. high, is placed in 
the container with roots as nearly as 
possible in natural position and more 
soil shoveled in; meanwhile gently 
shaking the plant so the soil will fill 
in around the roots (we use rather 
dry soil). As the container is filled 
we tramp the soil very hard with a 
potting stick made of an old shovel 
handle. Roses like tight soil. After 
filling container to within 1 in. of 
the top, the containers are lifted 
carefully and placed in flats which in 
turn are loaded on wagons to go to 
our coldframes, which are 6 ft. wide 
and 27 ft. long. Each frame will 
hold 500 roses placed closely togeth¬ 
er. They are then thoroughly soaked, 
after which they are covered with 
single thickness burlap blankets 8 ft. 
wide by 30 ft. long which we have 
made here at a cost of $1.50 each by 
our bag company. 
For the next three weeks, to pro¬ 
vide a humid atmosphere and to pre¬ 
vent the drying effects of winds they 
are sprayed 4 or 5 times per day, the 
object being to prevent the tops 
from shriveling before root action be¬ 
gins. 
Care in Growing of Roses. 
In about 3 weeks the eyes begin 
to swell and then the blankets are re¬ 
moved in the day time and put back 
at night. About April 15 the breaks 
begin to show green. We then begin 
to space them by taking some of the 
roses out of each frame, moving them 
to our display gardens. As our sell¬ 
ing- season is now on we sell them out 
of the frames about as fast as we 
need the room. Spacing- is absolute¬ 
ly necessary to produce bushy plants 
and by constantly moving the plants 
around, we give them better sunlight, 
and get a better shaped plant, and, 
at the same time, prevent the plant 
from rooting into the soil. We try 
