i OREGON BULB FARMS, SANDY, OREGON 

To Our Friends and Customers: 
We take great pleasure in presenting herewith our new descriptive catalog of daffodils, 
bulbous iris, lilies and other bulbs, grown by us on our farms near Sandy, Oregon. 
It was with genuine regret that we arrived, some time during the past summer, at the - 
conclusion that it would be necessary to curtail our operations very considerably. Not 
only were we faced with the necessity of devoting part of our land to food crops but also 
the progressively more acute labor shortage made it very clear to us that we could not 
possibly handle with any efficiency as large a stock as we had in the past few years. 
Reducing our stocks from a total of close to 160 acres actually planted to not more than 
120 acres was a most difficult task. The demand for our bulbs has always been con- 
siderably larger than cur production and the decision of where and what to cut was one 
that took us several months to make. Studying our ris.ng production costs, the relative 
sales of the many hundreds of varieties we were growing, and the actual propagating 
records of all these varieties, we found that it would be impossible for us to continue to 
grow the many large blocks of cheap varieties. We therefore discarded a great many 
varieties such as Dosoris, Seagull, Early Surprise, Frans Hals, many Poeticus and Jonquil 
varieties, etc., etc., all of them of no particular merit and which we had been selling 
during the past years at or below actual production cost. Next, we decided to discard 
all those varieties which for one reason or another did not propagate well or which were 
subject to diseases and pests. Finally we decided to discard from our long list of novelties 
all those which in some ten years of trials did not seem to be particularly outstanding or 
superior to other, better known varieties. 
We realize very well that in this list of discards there will be many varieties listed by 
our customers and for which a good demand exists. The absence of many of the cheaper 
varieties will undoubtedly cause a bigger demand for some of the better types and we 
feel that without any doubt there will be an acute shortage of good daffodils in the fol- 
lowing years. This applies especially to the better grade mixtures of which we sold 
many hundreds of thousands of bulbs annually. 
The final result of our reduction in stocks is that we will have some 30 per cent less 
bulbs to offer in 1944 than we actually sold during the past years. We believe, however, 
that our reduced acreage is now at a point where we will be able to handle it econom- 
ically and efficiently, even with our sharply reduced staff. In view of the increasingly 
more serious transportation delays, we feel that it is more important to grow less and 
make timely deliveries than to try to continue struggling with the large acreages as we 
have in the past. | 
WE sincerely hope that all our customers will study our list of discards carefully and 
adjust their offerings accordingly. We will not have any bulbs to offer of the varieties 
listed on page 10, nor will we, we believe, be in a position to accept new or sharply 
increased orders in other varieties. However, we will endeavor to fill all orders from old 
and established customers for the varieties listed in our catalog. As usual we will issue a 
special trade price list later in the season. 
. May we remind you again that we supply exclusively the larger jobbers and seed stores 
in this country. All orders and inquiries from florists and retail buyers are referred to 
these customers. Descriptions in this catalog are not copyrighted and may be freely 
quoted. We have a very complete collection of photographs and color plates, and all 
this material can be supplied at nominal cost. | 
OREGON BULB FARMS. 
JAN DE GRAAFF, President. 
