THE GLADIOLUS FANCIER’S GUIDEBOOK FOR 1948 
Page 3 

INTRODUCTORY 
A GAIN, this booklet is planned for you. 
It adopts your point of view. It gives 
you hitherto unpublished facts upon 
which to base your own conclusions. 
not cluttered up with fictitious values. 
A small portion of the information in this 
booklet is repeated from last year. In such 
instances, the data is still so valuable that 
we cannot possibly leave it out. 
It is 
This is our 20th annual catalog. 
Undoubtedly you want others to admire 
your flowers, since appreciation of the general 
quality of your glads by your friends is grati- 
fying. Our greatest effort is expended to 
eliminate your spending time on inferior sorts. 
To accomplish this we do not restrict our 
data to our own offerings and the more you 
read in this Guidebook the more you will be 
convinced that here is a little “instruction 
course” on Gladiolus with an irreducible mini- 
mum of bias. 
For further valuable current literature on 
gladiolus, the one outstanding bargain is ob- 
tainable only through the Ohio State Gladi- 
olus Society, the only society offering a four- 
way combination membership including The 
Canadian Gladiolus Society, the New Eng- 
land Gladiolus Society and there are four 
quarterly bulletins of the North American 
Gladiolus Council, all for $4.25 . . . a $6.00 
value. Past experience relating to early ex- 
haustion of the Year Books dictates the 
warning that acceptance of this offer should 
be made before the end of February. For 
more complete information see our ‘‘Society 
Page,’ page 33 hereof. 
Our business is growing by leaps and 
bounds. Our ability to answer correspondence 
on relatively unessential subjects has almost 
reached the vanishing point. We pack our 
booklet with many pages of answers to many 
questions we get nevertheless. Every question 
vital to the selection and growing of good glads 
we think we have already answered some- 
where in this booklet. 
However, we will not allow the business to 
reach the stage, all too common, where the 
proprietor no longer is able to personally 
inspect the outgoing stocks for complete 
freedom from injurious insects and bulb 
diseases. Our past customers know what 
quality of bulbs they will get. Our reputa- 
tion for sound bulbs is more than national. 
Our reputation for offering only the very best 
varieties to be found around the world is 
equally broad. We plan to keep it that way. 
_Horticultural costs have gone up and will go 
higher. Paper and printing and cartons, too. 
A grower-cataloger of bulbs has certain in- 
escapable costs: planting stock, use of land, 
its preparation, planting, cultivating, digging, 
hauling, curing, cleaning, grading, storage 
quarters, fumigating or other processes to 
combat insects and bulb diseases, advertising 
of one form or another, catalogs, postage, 
packing and shipping. There may be addi- 
tional items of overhead such as clerical, irri- 
gation, spraying, etc. 
_ Heavier buying of the newer sorts has eaten 
into what should have been retained for 
propagating reserves. 
We do not issue a fall list and we do not 
solicit ‘“‘pre-catalog’’ orders. Most of them 
require later revision because of abandoned 
varieties and price reductions. We do rec- 
ommend that you place your order soon after 
receipt of this Guidebook to avoid, in so far 
as it is possible, the disappointment of sold 
out items. 
Variety descriptions are vital to a cata- 
loger’s reputation. Yet the average cata- 
loger, for the most part, copies the originator’s 
description and trusts to luck. We think we 
try out but “junk” without listing more 
varieties than any cataloger in America. 
Most catalogers use their selling facilities to 
get rid of their “bad investments.’ The 
more varieties a cataloger lists, the easier it 
is to ‘“‘cash out” a variety that has proved a 
disappointment to him. A _ variety has 
around thirty different characteristics to con- 
sider, relating to form, color, size, height, 
strength, substance, season, bulb health, pro- 
pagation, etc. No cataloger can spare the 
time and space to describe them all, but we 
can and do report a glad’s most interesting 
features and you may definitely assume, in 
the absence of specific mention of some 
undesirable traits, to the best of our know- 
ledge and belief, the traits or habits not 
specifically mentioned are above the 
‘‘satisfactory’’ level. 
Over the years we have built up an enviable 
reputation for generous filling of orders by 
medium of overcount, oversize, samples of 
new sorts to try, free bulbs for society mem- 
berships, free memberships and color charts, 
etc: 
We appreciate receiving a portion of your 
bulb purchases. We do not necessarily soli- 
cit it all. By inducing you to seek society 
literature we deliberately put you in contact 
with the advertising of our “‘fiercest competi- 
tors’ —J. D. Long, Elmer Gove, Carl Salbach 
and a host of other long time friends in the 
industry. 

HERBERT O. EVANS 
Farm, State Route 91 
SOLON, OHTO 
