& 
EXPERIMENTS WITH AZALEAS 
AND RHODODENDRONS 
’Few years ago, a visiting nurseryman cracked, “It’s 
so poor you couldn’t raise a disturbance on it”. He 
was looking at Waynesbero soil. 
No effort will be attempted here to make a national 
issue of it, but that’s not entirely true. Soil in the 
Waynesboro area does grow some things beautifully. 
However, it does not lend itself well to the growing 
of plants of the ericaceous group. This includes 
Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Pieris, Ericas (Heaths), 
Leucothe, ete. 
Maybe the Waynesboro soil situation is actually a 
blessing in disguise. To grow, as we do, hundreds of 
thousands of plants in this group, much experimental 
work has been forced upon us. 
Along the Eastern Seaboard, and in some parts of 
the Great Lakes region, there are many places where 
these plants grow excellently with lttle or no soil 
adjustinent. Here and there, inland, where the soil is 
gravelly, and well drained, they do well. But persona! 
observations in many nurseries indicate that plenty 
of others have the same troubles with soils as we do. 
While these reports and observations are not, by any 
means, the ultimate conclusions, we do believe that 
they might be of help. 
Azaleas, Rhododendrens, ete. are good money 
makers; and if you can finish them well, they will 
bring you top profits. Most of us would like to “de 
a job” on them. 
Preparing soils on an acreage basis is expensive. 
Most inland growers concentrate upon growing these 
ericaceous plants in outside beds. (See page 23 for 
suggestions on these beds.) Comments herein, there- 
fore will be based upon the assumption that the 
growing job will be in outside beds. 
We grow only liners, so these reports will be of 
experiments with small plants. It might well be 
noted that small plants react more quickly than 
larger ones; and a given detrimental treatment, as 
an illustration, will show up promptly on small plants. 
If the effect cannot be re-adjusted or counteracted, 
the small plants can always be washed free of soil 
(Continued on page 18) 
16 
