Rambling Thoughts While Strolling 
No variety is perfect. Even the best have their faults. Perfection has not been 
attained in anything else so why expect it in gladiolus. 
No variety is so good but that some people will be disappointed in it and no 
variety is so bad but that some will like it. 
Even the best variety grown under poor conditions does not look good. 
There is an enormous difference in quality of glads grown under different 
conditions and by different people. The expert show grower produces a quality 
of bloom that the ordinary person never dreamed of. I have seen varieties that I 
introduced grown so well I didn’t recognize them. 
After seeing some of the newest beautifully ruffled varieties a plain petaled 
sort looks very common now. 
Man and nature are creating real art in some of the newer kinds. 
If you want a hobby and love the beautiful what better hobby is there than 
growing and living with a garden of gladiolus. 
If you haven’t become a real glad “fan” or “nut” you can’t realize the ecstatic 
pleasure in going out to the garden in the morning and seeing the blooms that 
have opened during the night. 
There are many disappointments in any garden but the pleasures much more 
than offset them. 
Enormous advances are being made in the new varieties of glads and ten 
years from now few of the present day varieties will be grown. 
Many amateurs resent the growers exhibiting at the shows in the open classes. 
They think they, the amateurs, have no chances against the growers. It is true, 
the commercial grower has a much larger number of blooms to select from but the 
amateur usually has much more time to give his glads better culture and can 
produce much better flowers than the commercial man usually does. 
Often people go to gladiolus shows and remark that they have better glads 
at home. And in many cases they have. In almost every show there are many 
poor quality glads and often anyone with fairly good stuff could bring it into the 
shows and win prizes. So you amateurs, why not grow some good ones next year 
and bring them to the shows, win some prizes and raise the quality of the shows. 
Having your glads ruined by thrip is largely a matter of carelessness. You can 
often grow good glads without disinfecting or spraying but if you do that is your 
good luck. To be on the safe side and to insure having good blooms by all means 
start out with clean bulbs and then spray every week or so from the time the 
plants are a few inches high. If there aren’t any thrip in your neighborhood you 
probably would not be troubled with them anyway but if there are some within a 
fair distance by all means spray with Rototox or some other good disinfectant. 
Nearly always when a person gets thrip for the first time he doesn’t know 
what is the trouble and thinks it is some disease. Whenever your plants make good 
growth but the buds dry up and do not open that is caused by thrip. 
When your plants are affected with thrip but have no disease the bulbs are 
perfectly all right for another year. Many thousands of bulbs have been discarded 
because of thrip but by using napthalene flakes on the bulbs after digging or by 
soaking them in disinfectant you can easily rid the bulbs of all insect pests and the 
bulbs will be just as good for another year, or even better, because when thrip are 
present on the plants they act the same as cutting the blooms off and preventing 
them from going to seed. The bulbs are all the plumper and better. 
“/ am just cutting the last of a wonderful season of bloom thanks chiefly to the order 
I received from you last spring. Just how you can be so generous in your count and stilt 
keep up the quality of your bulbs is hard to understand." — David Ai.len, Canada. 
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