Dig £Dung 
PUBLISHED BY 
WAYLAND DAHLIA GARDENS 
E.R.Ryno. Prop. 
Wayland, Michigan 
SEASON CF 1936 
Beginning with this issue DIG & 
DUNG will be mailed to you regu¬ 
larly each year about September 1, 
instead of January 1 as heretofore. 
This will place it in your hands when 
you are ready to make up your list 
for your new Spring catalog, and in 
time for you to make selections from 
blooming plants if you wish. 
Because of the very short growing 
season last year tubers of many var¬ 
ieties were unusually small, but our 
fields this year prove that these small 
tubers were of top quality and able 
to produce plants full of vigor and 
“rarin’ to bloom”. 
Don’t forget that many of the 
finest varieties of dahlias naturally 
make small to medium size tubers 
and it is impossible to furnish extra 
large tubers of such varieties even 
in the most favorable season. Where 
roots are long and slender as are 
Bertha Home, Mrs. Carl Salbach, 
Fort Monmouth and many others, we 
always cut them back to a length 
which will lessen damage from break¬ 
age in packing and mailing. This 
does not lessen the ability of the 
root to make a perfect plant. 
Once again we wish to state that 
we do not sell or offer for sale un¬ 
divided clumps of dahlia roots at 
any season of the year; and all di¬ 
visions sold by us are carefully cut 
to one eye as required for planting. 
And a word about our method of 
dividing clumps. We use knives only, 
not shears, and thus avoid all bruis¬ 
ing and haggling of root crowns. In 
a recent letter from Mr. Wm. A. 
Finger, Jr., manager of the Locust 
Valley Dahlia Farm of Long Island, 
relative to the use of shears in di¬ 
viding clumps, he says, “All L. I. 
growers use shears or so called clip¬ 
pers. Of most stock received of L. I. 
growers only about 60 to 65% is fit 
for resale.” We are quoting Mr. 
Finger not to knock other growers 
but to show you that at least one 
other well known grower agrees with 
us on the use of shears in making 
divisions. 
Don’t list too many varieties of 
dahlias and don’t be in too big a 
hurry to include the new produc¬ 
tions. In our actual trials the ma¬ 
jority of these strictly new sorts 
prove an utter failure when grown 
under practical garden conditions 
and in the average garden soil. There 
are now so many good varieties that 
have been thoroughly tried out that 
it does not pay the seedsman to take 
chances. Leave that to us. If they 
are good we will soon have them for 
you at a price which you can afford 
to pay. 
We have always made a practice 
of trimming our tubers when they 
are divided. Side roots, long ‘tails’, 
etc., merely increase the danger from 
broken necks, bother in packing, etc., 
without in any wmy adding to the 
value of the root for planting pur¬ 
poses. All fresh cuts are then treat¬ 
ed with hydrated lime to prevent 
mold and rot when tubers are re¬ 
turned to ou r cool, damp stock room. 
Occasionally we have a call for 
tubers untrimmed and untreated, for 
use in department store trade. We 
can supply such tubers only when 
order is placed before clumps are 
divided. In fact, we can prepare 
your stock in any special manner 
you wish provided you let us know 
your wants, with detailed specifica¬ 
tions, early in the season. 
We had an abundance of rain 
throughout the entire season of 1935 
and while this has greatly increased 
the labor and expense of cultivation, 
we look for a good crop of wonder¬ 
fully fine stock for 1936 trade. As 
a result considerable reductions have 
been made in the prices of many of 
our leading varieties. In a few 
cases, however, we have had to raise 
prices because of scarcity of plant¬ 
ing stock, yet we believe you will 
find our prices on the whole as low 
as you could possibly expect on stock 
that can be depended upon to pro¬ 
duce strong, healthy plants w T hich 
are absolutely true to name. 
Where customer’s order amounts 
to $100. or more we furnish a lib¬ 
eral supply of Cultural Direction 
leaflets with customer’s name im¬ 
printed on same without extra 
charge. These leaflets are printed in 
blocks early in the season and it is 
important that we know your re¬ 
quirements on this item in advance. 
We always urge our customers to 
make their selections during Septem¬ 
ber while plants are in full bloom. 
In this manner you can be sure of 
getting just the color combinations 
you want and have an opportunity 
to see the strong points of the var¬ 
ieties you are listing. As a matter 
of fact it is really worth any man’s 
time to visit our gardens and see the 
hundreds of thousands of blooms 
which are presented from about Sep¬ 
tember 1st. until frost. 
Don’t think it is necessary to 
change your entire list each season. 
If you had good results with the var¬ 
ieties you offered last year, the same 
list should show even greater sales 
if repeated in this year’s catalog. 
While it is true that we buy 
thousands of tubers every year, 
mostly for our own planting pur¬ 
poses, and can almost always offer 
a cash market for good stock of 
standard varieties, yet we are not 
jobbers. Practically all the tubers we 
sell to our customers are grown by 
ourselves, or under our immediate 
supervision and we know at all times 
just what we are sending out. 
For the past three years we have 
been very short on standard reds, 
especially those varieties required 
for counter trade. Last year we had 
a very fine lot of Pride of California 
offered to us at $40. per thousand. 
We wanted this lot very badly for 
planting purposes, but we did not 
feel that the grower could really ex¬ 
pect us to consider his offer when 
we had already sold our own stock 
of the same variety at $30. Growers 
who have surplus lots for sale should 
please bear in mind that we cannot 
offe r more than our minimum selling 
price for such stock. 
