Preface 
TO MY MANY FLOWER-MINDED FRIENDS AND 
CUSTOMERS: According to the calendar another year is 
here, but to me since our past mum season was so long 
(I gathered a few late mums right before Christmas) 
that hardly seems possible. However, since time does fly 
I find I am faced with the job of getting out another 
catalogue—adding a few that I liked the past year and 
dropping a few that I thought did not deserve keeping 
(in my opinion of course, so don’t take any omissions as 
conclusive evidence that they are not good. In your 
locality some varieties that I have dropped may do 
unusually well). 
Last year you will note (I hope) that I reported 
trouble with my plants growing nicely—but with only 
an apology for a root system. Well, the past year I did 
not have this trouble, but did run up against another 
kind of trouble—the need for sterilizing or fumigating 
the soil where mums (or any other crop for that matter) 
have been grown for a number of years (as in my case). 
I found that where mums have been grown a number 
of years on the same soil the sub-soil population of 
microscopic insects and fungus spores reaches sueh a 
point that it is almost impossible to carry the mums 
on to blooming time in the fall—many will die before 
that stage is reached, and this in spite of any amount 
of spraying or dusting you may do on the plant above 
the ground level. One line of thought adhered to by 
many of the learned botanists is that these so-very-small 
insects do not do so much damage to the root system 
themselves, but by breaking the seal on the root system 
when they puncture the root to feed on the sap, they 
afford the ever-present fungus spores a chance to enter 
the root system. Now I do not profess to be competent 
to pass upon the correctness (or lack of correctness) of 
these professors, but I do know that quite often when a 
hot spell follows immediately after a rainy spell (which 
often happens at some time during the summer) the 
fungus that has in some manner gained access to the 
root system grows very fast, and some afternoon when 
you look over your mum garden you will note numerous 
plants wilted as though starved for water. This you 
know can not be true, as the ground will probably be 
wet. Upon examination you will find the entire root 
system rotten (a dry rot) and the plant left sitting on 
top of the ground so to speak. This is the work of the 
fungus FUSARIUM, and it is principally to control 
it that I am experimenting with six different chemical 
preparations this year, trying to find some good, effec- 
tive, practical and fool-proof method of sterilizing or 
fumigating the soil. There are a number of preparations 
put out by the insecticide manufacturers, and I am trying 
out what I consider the most promising six. Next year 
I hope to be able to pass along some valuable informa- 
tion in this regard, but right now can not make any 
recommendations, although I am fairly sure a number 
of my customer-friends who have been growing their 
mums on the same soil for a number of years, have 
experienced the same trouble. In passing, I might com- 
ment that the greenhouse people have a somewhat 
easier problem in that they can change the soil in their 
beds, or use steam to sterilize the beds since steam is 
usually available in a greenhouse. However, the real 
“dirt” flower grower is not so fortunate and must 
depend on some chemical preparation to put in the soil 
to rid his garden of microscopic insect pests, principally 
nematodes. 
I am enclosing a little leaflet on spraying or dusting 

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