J. R. HOPKINS 
Deerfield, Illinois 
Price List - 1946 
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FOURTH ANNUAL PRICE LIST AND 
SIXTH ANNUAL RATING REPORT. 


This year my rated list of the best gladiolus in each size 
and color class has but 219 varieties in it and of these I am 
offering for sale over 100 varieties. 
My rating report is included - and I have also included my 
1945 discard list - found on the last page - or near it. 982 
varieties in last year's list were squeezed out and 58 new ones 
made the list. 
I want to thank all the hundreds who bought last year and 
hope I do not owe anybody any letters. I like to get letters 
from glad folks and always answer them - no matter how busy I 
am. My bulbs this year are the cleanest I have ever had - tho 
not so many jumbos - as the Midwest had a cold, wet year with 
but 151 growing days - a short year. The bulbs generally were 
not as large as usual - but the growth from smalls and bb was 
wonderful. 
Every bulb I grow was planted by my own hands - and every 
bulb dug was my own personal work. This won't keep on - but up 
to now has been true. Some of the glads came with wonderful 
bloom - it seemed even better than ever before. On rating a 
glad I eut it, place it in an individual bottle and wait until 
it is fully open. Then I rate the glad - as it is before me - 
and with a completely open mind and no prejudices in favor or 
against any names - regardless of whether they are famous names 
-~ or new and heretofore unknown. After my ratings are completed 
at end of the year - always between 350 and 400 varieties are 
rated - I select those rated 80 or better and they go into my 
best list. 
Then when I have dug and inventoried I see how many of those 
in my best list I can offer for sale at retail. JI am never 

J.R. Hopkins - selects one with a neckttre on this time - 
some said I looked like a bundit 1m lust years’ picture. 

A basket of Jay's Joy 1s almost unbeatable. 
influenced by fact I may have on hand bulbs of a variety - ag 
often I have good stocks of bulbs and find they are not in my 
best list. These go into my mixture at »7.50 per hundred and 
often it costs me two or three hundred dollars on a single 
variety - simply because I failed to give that variety one or 
two more points in its rating. However I have stood by my guns 
and rate just as uninfluenced by any commercial consideration 
now as I did when a simon pure amateur - and always will. 
This is not the way you make the most money out of glads I 
admit - for the way to make the most money out of glads is to 
sell all glads you have for as much as you can get. But it 
does assure gladiolus bulb buyers at least one price list where 
every variety on the list is included in the list of the best 
in its color and where none are offered for sale that are not 
on this list - except one or two where I tell you all about it 
as I offer the glad for sale -glike Casablanca. 
dy list is also becoming more and more the only published 
and disinterested guide to what are the best commercial glads. 
A glad can get on my best list that is not a good, dependable 
grower but it cannot possibly stay there very long. If an un- 
certain or variable performer, sooner or later I find it out 
and when I find it out it is immediately discarded. 
I want my list to be full protection to any amateur who 
wants to start out and get fine blooms his first year. [I also 
want no one to ever get stung with any variety they get from 
me. Of course no two growers grow exactly alike and glads - 
even the best - perform differently for different growers - but 
with me the glads are all right - given good growing they will 
give a fine performance - every variety listed. 
I also have observed more this year than ever before that my 
list is growing more and more different from all other lists. 
Even the longest lists do not contain anywhere near as many of 
those on my “best” list. 
These annual rating lists have proved out to be quite de- 
pendable. There may be and always will be some question if all 
the new ones added to the list for the first time will prove out 
to deserve to be there. But most of them do prove out as 
worthy. Sometimes we discard varieties that seem rather cruel 
to a very beautiful variety - but without any exception I can 
think of right now they prove out as the years go by to be un- 
deserving of a place in the list of the best varieties. 

Your catalog 1s most entertuininy and I enjoyea reading 1t 
ammensely. J. O'D. - Wellesley 41tlls, Mass. 
Very much enjoyed your list and ratings und know what a lot 
of work you must have put im on these quite apart from growtny 
the vurteties. P.R.S. - Garrettsville, 0: 
