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Not Southern Grown Bulbs — 
MIDDLE ATLANTIC If You Please 
One of our good friends recommended our bulbs to a prominent amateur grower and 
received from him a reply from which we quote the following: 
“IT have—either right or wrong—a prejudice against growing bulbs from down 
South, thinking they may have to be acclimated to our Northern climate before 
doing their best.” 
We desire to avoid any controversy as to the merits of ‘bulbs from down South,” 
but we do wish to call attention to the fact that this must definitely refer to bulbs grown 
in the far South where gladiolus can be grown during the winter months and consequently 
the bulbs have insufficient or no rest period. 
Virginia is the most southern of the Middle-Atlantic group of States—not South- 
Atlantic. We quote from the Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 28, page 117: 
‘Virginia lies within the temperate zone and, speaking broadly, there are no 
great extremes of heat and cold. The temperature is quite stable from day to day 
in the coastal plain. The mean temperature is: Winter 39.8°, spring 56.8°, summer 
77.2°, autumn 60.8°. The average number of days each year with a maximum tem- 
perature above 90° is 28; below 32°, 55.” 
This seems to be sufficient to show that Virginia is not ‘down South” notwithstanding 
the widely publicized slogan: ‘‘Richmond—down where the South begins.’’ Our bulbs are 
stored at a temperature of as low as 40° for considerably longer than sixty days each year. 
For a considerable part of that time we have to use heaters to maintain a temperature 
above freezing. We are equipped with 1,000 large screen-bottom storage trays which 
enable us to maintain a high degree of humidity in our bulbs storage without danger 
of rotting and store well over 1,000,000 bulbs in all sizes. 
Our autumn temperatures are especially favorable to growth of bulbs and permit us 
to continue digging bulbs almost without interruption until December 15th. This season, 
we finished digging on December 21st. Consequently we are not compelled to and do 
not dig our bulbs until they are fully matured. You will notice our bulbs are always 
plump and the husks are smooth (except varieties like Betty Nuthall and Miss Ala- 
meda which never show smooth husks) indicating that these bulbs are fully matured. 
More than ten years of growing gladiolus bulbs has proven to us that bulbs dug before 
full maturity do not produce good spikes the following season. Much that has been said 
about certain varieties having to become acclimated before producing representative 
spikes is due to the fact that the bulbs were not fully matured and it sometimes requires 
several years for such stock to recover its full vitality. This is particularly true of the 
Australian and New Zealand varieties. 
Our sandy loam soil is particularly adapted to producing clean, healthy bulbs which 
is evidenced by the fact that several European growers have large plantings of Narcissus 
in Virginia not far from our gardens. This soil has never been used for bulb growing 
and consequently has not yet become infected with the various fungus diseases so prev- 
alent in other sections of North America where bulbs have been grown for many years. 
You may buy RICHGLAD Garden Bulbs for many years with the assurance they were 
grown in virgin soil where bulbs were never grown before. 
AG. ASG. BG BG ABS. BH HBS. AAS. GS. BS. AS. HAS. AS AG. AG 
