HORNBERGER’S HOME AND GARDEN SERVICE 
t 
CO-OPERATORS’ GLADIOLUS TEST GARDENS 
Rate for Commercial Values. 
CO-OPERATE—TEST ALL. 
WE NEED MORE CO-OPERATORS: We offer you a plan of co-operation 
as outlined below. All who believe in our efforts to secure commercial rating 
as propagators for all commercial varieties, should be willing to assist in this 
work. Read the following with care, and then if you feel inclined to j*in 
us, send your written request that we enter your name as a Co-operator of this 
voluntary testing group. There are no dues or extra costs to you, at least 
not in its present stage, and your membership, as a Co-operator, can be re¬ 
voked at any time upon your written request. The only cost to you, at this stage, is the 
cost of your own stock which you would likely purchase if you did not become a Co-oper¬ 
ator. I will be a Co-Operator in the same manner that you are: I simply furnish the plan 
and the material, such as “rating cards,’’ etc., free, at least, for the next year or two, 
until we can get well under way. At the present time, I will use my own office and its 
equipment as a headquarters, and appoint myself secretary. If we have only a limited 
response, that is to say less than 25 people who ask to become Co-Operators, then we will 
just continue as here outlined. However, should this plan prove so popular that we get 
50 to 100 member Co-Operators in the next twelve months, then we will have to plan 
on a larger scale. We shall then have to call a meeting at some place and organize, along 
a similar plan to that of the average Gladious Society, only that ours will be a CO-OPER¬ 
ATIVE GLADIOLUS TESTING SOCIETY. For the present, we will confine ourselves 
to the more limited idea of some 10 to 25 who are deeply interested in testing work. All 
are welcome, growers and amateurs, because there is space on the rating cards to indi 
cate if you grow Glads as a business or for pleasure. 
Many attempts have been made, quite recently, and some on an extensive scale, to 
rate Glads for commercial values, but all of them as far as I am informed plan only to 
rate for the commercial value of the spike and bloom alone; as far as I know, they all 
omit propagation. This is the real object of commercial rating. As far as spike and bloom 
are concerned, the leading growers of our country have been doing a fine job along that 
line, and I am sure the many test gardens now springing up do not have any greater 
ability to rate for commercial values than do all the leading growers—each grower for his 
particular section of the country. The variety Frederick Christ (Diener); if it had pro¬ 
pagated only moderately, in my opinion it would have been one of the finest commercial 
Glads ever to be introduced, but this variety increases so slowly under general average 
methods in the east, that unless we have special propagating conditions it will hardly 
give us enough new bulbs to replace the original purchase after some few years growing. 
However, I feel sure, that if we took a dozen large bulbs and grew them in a test garden, 
it might easily win an “Award of Merit” for the commercial value of the spike and bloom 
alone, and prove far superior to hundreds of commercials that are much better propa¬ 
gators. Varieties must propagate at least fair, if they a,re to be of any commercial 
value. 
In most sections of the east, where so much of our vast population is located, Glads 
must be grown largely without irrigation, as water is not always available in large enough 
quantity to depend upon to irigate any large acreage, and it >*n»ires nealry 30,000 gallons 
of water to put one inch of water over one acre of land—less than one inch at a time is 
not considered worth the effort or cost. 
We have experimented for years with such high rated, slow propagators; my own ex 
perience, covering nearly all phases of Gladiolus experience, has taught me that by the 
use of SPECIAL PROPAGATION, which includes the right location, warm soils, water, 
cloth houses, nearness to the modifying influence of large bodies of water, etc., and the 
special pre-germination of bulblets, I can increase these very slow propagators many, many 
times faster than is possible under average conditions, and all varieties must be examined 
as to how they will perform under average conditions. These special methods will b© 
more costly, but if I receive from 1.0c up to $1.00 for each of my bulblets, to say nothing 
of what I get for my planting sizes, then this kind of business will pay me many times 
more than growing cheaper varieties in larger quantity. I will have the assistance of 
prominent groups to help me advertise them; I can point to these “Awards of Merit’*' 
granted by some well recognized Test Garden as absolute proof of commercial value. For 
