Growing 39,239 Bulbs From Seed 
The writer of these notes spent a profit- 
able day and a half at the Central Interna- 
tional Glad Show, at Madison, Wisconsin, 
in August 1950. While there I chanced to 
visit with several nationally known hy- 
bridizers. One of those men said to me, 
“If you want to find nice seedlings, you 
must have population”. Up to that time 
my quota had been four or five thousand 
little seedling bulbs per season, with prob- 
ably twenty or thirty small bulbs from 
each of a large number of crosses. I dashed 
madly home from that great show, and 
proceeded at once to get a large amount of 
seed “made”, and conditions seemed to be 
ideal, for I did harvest a wonderful lot of 
seed from 264 different crosses. From some 
of these I had two or three thousand seeds; 
it being the plan to get as much seed as 
possible from what we thought were our 
best crosses. Before leaving for our Florida 
vacation, I made a careful estimate of my 
seed crop and figured that I had some 
where near 85,000 seeds. 
Returning from Florida about April 1st, 
I began planning the seed bed. It was 
raised about two inches for drainage, and 
curbed with 2x4s to prevent washing out 
if hard rains came early. The bed was 
about 300 feet long, and eight feet wide. I 
tried to plant the seed rows 14 inches apart. 
Every seed was planted by my own hands; 
I tried to have four or five hundred seeds 
per row, hoping for 50% germination, and 
possibly a plant for every half inch of row, 
or possibly two hundred of the little plants 
per eight-foot row. The seed was planted 
about one half or one third of an inch 
deep, and covered well with a mixture of 
Michigan Peat, one third, sifted soil one 
third and the remaining one third was 
screened sand. In about 15 or 16 days the 
little seedlings began poking thru. It has 
usually taken three to four weeks for them 
to germinate, in former years. It seemed 
like every viable seed wanted to grow. We 
watered lightly with Skinner Sprinkler 
lines as they were germinating. The first 
seeds were planted May 3rd, and the last 
by May 17th. By June 5th or 6th we had 
an excellent stand of tiny plants growing 
splendidly. 
Our yard man, Earl, weeded and hoed 
these regularly for several weeks, never 
allowing the seed bed to dry out at all, 
until about July 24th or 25th I decided to 
mulch between the rows with lawn clip- 
pings. Earl placed the mulch in the bed 
about 2% inches deep and kept it about 
an inch from the little plants. Then came 
the rains — avalanche or deluge — almost 
daily, with two hail storms to make it 
emphatic; and our mulch began tangling 
up our little plants, altho much of it did 
wash away. In some areas it seems to 
sour the ground, and we had “leaf spot” 
and damping off in rather serious propor- 
tions. We waited a couple of weeks for a 
dry day, and then hoed or cultivated the 
rows thoroughly, and we think we headed 
off some of the damage done by the mulch. 
We blamed the mulch for it, anyway. By 
this time our little plants had three and 
four leaves, and by August 24th the first 
bloom appeared in the seed bed. Dozens 
more showed during September. We think 
that by cultivating the mulch into the soil, 
we gave some aeration to the roots, and 
saved a lot of our plants. 
We started to dig the little bulbs about 
October Ist. Earl combed the soil for 
every one, and I washed them as they were 
brought in. After drying I counted each 
lot, and in a few cases graded them (by 
my eye). One group, Orange Gold by 
Magnolia, there were 295 bulbs total. 40 
were husky No. 3, 66 were No. 4s, 95 were 
strong 5s and the balance smaller. Most 
of them seemed to run about that size on 
the average. Occasionally some would 
have a larger proportion of large sizes, and 
in one lot of 1004 bulbs in one cross, there 
were no threes at all, but a large number 
of fours. In another cross with Benj. Brit- 
ten as seed parent, nearly all were large 
threes. 
The writer intends to clean every one of 
these 39,239 small bulbs before our next 
trip south, and place them in large paper 
bags to await the return of warm weather 
and planting time. Some DDT will be 
dusted over each lot. I plan to set them 
in rows by hand, about four to the foot of 
row—and allow no less than 2 feet for 
stakes of identity, so that I will give proper 
parentage to any selections made during 
the blooming. They are to be hand-plant- 
ed and hand-covered, so they will have 
the best possible opportunity to be ready 
for the third Central International Glad- 
iolus Show that will be held in Sioux City, 
August 9th and 10th, 1952. 
To all of you fine fellows who have been 
so nice to me at the Glad shows: Be 
warned! I think there is something com- 
ing out of these little bulbs to thrill some- 
one at this Big Show. I hope Mr. Carter 
will find something that will thrill him too 
as he judges the seedlings! 
I made a bet with one swell glad grower, 
that I would get forty thousand bulbs from 
this bed of seedlings! I missed it a little 
over 700 bulbs. He had better look out for 
1952! I'll make another bet with him then. 
His name is George. I have more seed 
than ever! It comes in quarts now! 
hi 
