Yladiolus Gleanings 
Greetings to our many glad friends and customers—and also to those of you who are 
receiving our catalog for the first time. I hope you had a great deal of pleasure out of 
your glads in 1949 in spite of difficult weather in many areas and that you are looking 
forward to a lot of new thrills in your 1950 garden. 
Before I tell you about some of the new worldbeaters now available for the first time, 
let’s commiserate a little about the 1949 weather! Even as I write this, the largest city in 
America is struggling to conserve its dwindling water supply. The drouth back of this 
situation began last June and took in much of the eastern half of the continent. When I 
flew across Ontario in mid-August, after attending the Canadian glad show, that province 
was a sea of brown. We were not hit quite so hard here in the upper Midwest, though 
even here we had to depend heavily on irrigation. I feel that our irrigation system installed 
two years ago paid for itself again this year. A weekly soaking paid off with another 
wonderful crop of high-crowned bulbs full of the pep required to produce those tall, rangy 
spikes next year. 
But no amount of watering will produce ideal spikes in prolonged 100° weather because 
the heat forces premature blooming. Everyone recognizes that pansies are much larger 
in cool weather than in hot weather but may be inclined to ascribe that fact to pansies 
being a cool-weather flower. But the same principle applies even to warm-weather 
flowers. An interesting instance was noted by visitors to the Jackson & Perkins rose 
garden at Newark, N. Y. on July 4, 1948. The roses, then just coming into full bloom after 
three weeks’ delay due to cool weather, were unbelievably large—almost like greenhouse 
chrysanthemums. I presume it is just another application of Emerson’s law of compensa- 
tion: Have your blooms early, or wait and have superior flowers. Duluth, Minnesota, 
which has very late springs compared to Southern Minnesota, where we are located, affords 
an annual illustration of this principle, being famous for the quality of its flowers. 
I know you are going to be surprised at not seeing some highly-touted glad varieties 
in our list. We are as vigilant as we know how to be in our search for outstanding new 
varieties. My travels this year in visiting glad shows and other growers’ fields were more 
extensive than ever before. But really outstanding varieties are never very numerous. I 
just can’t find 400, 500, or 600 varities that seem to me worth listing. 
New glad varieties are such a gamble that no glad grower has any temptation to play 
the horses. Mr. C. W. Currie, whose “Popularity Ratings” we reprint in this catalog, 
states that he totalled 216 new glad varieties introduced in 1949. We tried a good many of 
them—all the heavily advertised ones. In fact, we have several thousand dollars tied up 
right now in varieties under test, but I just can’t bring myself to catalog them until they 
have given an outstanding account of themselves in our trial ground. I believe that a 
conservative attitude in this respect will pay off in saving our customers disappointments. 
Growing glads in a high-fertility, low-humidity area like the Midwest is different from 
growing them in a cool and humid coastal climate. Whereas our fertile soil makes for 
high-grade bulbs, our dry air calls for a lot of stamina if a variety is to produce good bloom. 
Thus in a sense the Midwest makes an ideal testing-ground for new varieties. A glad 
which does well here should do well nearly everywhere. 
But even if there did seem to be an unusual number of “flopperoos” among the 216 
introductions of 1949, we feel that it is wise to take a charitable attitude because we know 
from experience that some of those which did not impress us this year will undoubtedly 
prove outstanding when acclimated. So, if you fail to find this or that alleged worldbeater 
in our list, you know that we were not sleeping at the switch. In the meantime, you can 
buy with confidence anything on our list, having assurance that it has been adequately 
tested. 
We also have a rule not to list any variety selling for more than $2.00 apiece, except 
in rare instances. If rose growers can maintain a ceiling of $2.50 per bush on new roses, 
surely $2.00 is a high enough introductory price for a gladiolus bulb. I am happy to see 
that more and more introducers are sharing this viewpoint. Not nearly as many $5.00 and 
$10.00 introductions are being put out as a few years ago. 
No variety can be in the limelight for more than a few years. Praising a $5.00 or $10.00 
variety to the skies merely creates frustration in the fancier who has a champagne taste 
and a beer income. Then when this variety gets down to a price where it would be in 
big demand, it is forgotten and some new out-of-reach worldbeater is the center of atten- 
tion. How much more sensible to make the publicity coincide with moderate prices and 
make both buyer and seller happy! 
In spite of what may appear an overly conservative attitude on new varieties, we have 
papi 
