That’s the real reason I was moved to set down these few rambling thoughts 
on paper and send them in gratitude to Elmer Gove, who sold me most of my 
bulbs. I can’t for the life of me understand why everybody doesn’t grow 
gladiolus. At least everybody who lives in the suburbs or anywhere that he 
can have a small plot to play with. Twenty-five by twenty-five feet is plenty, 
and you can start with lots less than that. 
It’s surprising what a real thrill you get out of bringing a couple of dozen 
of your choicest blooms into town and brightening up your office with them, 
or showing off by giving them away to fellow-workers. 
“Oh, aren’t they gorgeous,” and ‘Did you raise those yourself?” and “I 
never saw such beautiful gladiolus in my life’ are the usual greetings I get for 
a bouquet of ‘‘sword lilies,” as our grandfolks used to call glads. 
Now here’s the funny part of it. The gladiolus are not really wonderful 
(certainly not to an expert), and they are certainly not hard to grow. All I do 
is buy good bulbs (mostly medium size) from reputable specialists, read plant- 
ing directions, and follow them. You simply can’t go wrong if you are willing 
to do what the experts tell you. Rockwell’s book helps a lot, too. 
Work? Sure, there’s some work involved, but not very much, and I’ve worked 
a lot harder for lots less results than my glads give me. Besides, I like digging 
in the earth, and I like to create beauty, and I like to get by myself part of 
the time and ‘‘commune with nature.’’ My troubles seem to sort of fade into 
the background when my gladiolus are before me. 
It simply beats me that everybody doesn’t grow 
gladiolus. If they had any idea how easy it is and 
inexpensive (when you consider the dividends you get), 
I’m sure that more people would go in strongly for 
growing these wonderful flowers. 
Of course, in the old days (and until recent years in 
fact) gladiolus were subject to the rather devastating 
attacks of a little insect called “‘thrips.”? But they’ve 
been brought under almost perfect control nowadays 
with new insecticides, notably DDT, and it is an ab- 
solutely honest fact that I have not lost one bulb or 
spike of gladiolus to thrips this year. I dusted the 
bulbs (or corms, to be technical) in storage, and I 
dusted the foliage faithfully (ten minutes a week). I 
did not disinfect before planting. 

ae oe ee ae 
All this fun in my life started three years ago when 
I moved out of New York to a rented house in the suburbs and had only a bit 
of shady sand to grow a few beans and tomatoes. I decided to put a few flowers 
in, and my eye was caught in a catalog by a collection of thirty gladiolus bulbs 
with extremely handsome colors. I bought them and planted them and, of 
course, got indifferent results because I had poor ground and little light. After 
all, gladiolus do need sun and fair soil. 
But I got enough out of the first year’s blooms to realize I was missing a 
great deal. So the next year I planted the bulbs in an open field nearby where 
I got full sun, and had much more encouraging results, though I planted only 
about two dozen. 
The third year—that was last summer—I bought a few more bulbs and 
made row plantings of them but still didn’t total more than 50 or 75 blooms 
all summer. 
But by last spring the fever had reached almost boiling point and I became 
the proud possessor of about 500 new bulbs, and I planted them early this 
spring (March 16 the earliest lot) still in the same vacant lot, whose owner- 
ship I have no idea of. (I wonder if the owner ever wanders around and wonders 
to himself who is beautifying his plot?) 
