TO DELAY FLOWERING 
This is done thru prolonging daylight 
with electric lights as already suggested. 
For mid-season kind, turn on lights about 
Aug. 20. For December varieties, start a 
week later. Do not start later, or finished 
stock will tend to have long necks and 
sometimes, malformed flowers. Use 40 
Watt bulbs with reflectors. Space lights 
5 feet and high enuf to spread the light 
well over the bed. Turn lights on when 
darkness is reached and for 3 hours daily. 
Continue the lighting for three-fourths as 
many days as it is wished to delay flower¬ 
ing; in other words, if you wish to defer 
flowering 20 days, keep the lights on them 
15 days. It is not considered practical to 
delay flowering more than 3 or 4 weeks. 
Take first bud showing after light treat¬ 
ment stops. 
SOME ECONOMIC SUGGESTIONS 
Growing a good bed or house of Mums 
is one thing. Making it figure out a profit 
is something else. As a grower I some¬ 
times wish cost accounting was never thot 
of, for, what it reveals sometimes takes 
the interest and pleasure out of growing. 
But we have to pay our help, coal bills, and 
our soaring Roosevelt made taxes; and, 
we must make a profit and we should try 
and do so without working 12-14 hours 
daily ourselves. Making a profit in any 
business calls for a certain amount of busi¬ 
ness ability that can be cultivated. You 
can sometimes make more profit by sit¬ 
ting down and carefully figuring out your 
business than you can by hours of digging. 
Among a few points for saving costs 
we find the planting of rooted cuttings 
in place of early propagated stock a dis¬ 
tinct saving: moreover we get better re¬ 
sults. If cuttings are ready to take in 
January or early February, either top the 
growth or root and plant the cuttings for 
producing more cuttings in March-April 
which is the better time to take them in 
our latitude for rooted cuttings to plant in 
May. 
We also figure a distinct saving thru 
growing our Mums in what we call “cold 
houses.” Reason for this is that we don’t 
have so much depreciation to figure on 
such houses, and this figure is a heavy one 
in our modern houses. We get better re¬ 
sults too because the sides in these struc¬ 
tures are open, making them airy and 
cooler than a regulation house. Also, there 
is a lot of work in connection with Mum 
growing that should be done by boys and 
girls or inexperienced help. 
And finally, if you can buy rooted cut¬ 
tings in quantity at around 2 cents does 
it pay to produce them? 
While this might be a debatable ques¬ 
tion, the fact is that every season more 
large growers who keep close records, and 
whose order runs from 50 to 125,000, claim 
it does not. The grower whose planting 
is much more limited and who can’t buy 
quite so close might feel different, but, 
usually such growers retail and are at the 
height of their busy and crowded season 
when propagating should be done. Some 
such growers feel that it pays them better 
to buy than it does the large growers. Be¬ 
sides, the direct cost of growing your cut¬ 
tings, there are indirect advantages to con¬ 
sider such as, having your cuttings de¬ 
livered to you the day you have figured to 
plant. Also, when you buy annually, the 
order should be made up in the fall from 
notes on varieties as they are seen in 
flower. Frequently our planting consists 
largely of kinds that produce cuttings 
most freely and frequently enuf such are 
inferior. And what about direct costs ? 
Various figures are given on the cost of 
producing cuttings. We have noted them all 
the way from 1^ cents to 2^/^. We ques¬ 
tion whether these figures represent all 
the cost such as, various overhead charges 
and losses thru cuttings rotting in spring. 
To produce first class cuttings, a well ex¬ 
posed light bench for stock plants is neces¬ 
sary. If you can get the figure on what 
a flowering crop would be worth from such 
a bench, the first figure to charge against 
your Mum cuttings would be had. And 
what about the cost in time and material 
used in fighting midge ? Very few growers 
are free of this costly pest. An increasing 
number of retail grower crops are being 
more profitably produced by specialists and 
for some substantial reasons Mum cut¬ 
tings are rapidly taking their place among 
them. Our cuttings are produced in very 
large quantities and with scientific clean¬ 
liness and efficiency. It might be to your 
advantage to let us hear from you about 
your supply. In conclusion the writer well 
recalls a remark made just 46 years ago 
to the effect that Mums had about reached 
as high a state of perfection as it was 
possible to achieve. But what improve¬ 
ments since those days! and this better¬ 
ment will continue for Mums are very 
much a staple crop and there is hardly a 
variety that we can’t find some fault with. 
But increasing attention must be paid to 
the economic factors involved in their 
cultivation. 
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