TROUBLES 
We all have them! Here are the six that reach 
us most often. 
Is your problem among them? 
1. Cuttings rot off shortly after or within a 
month of planting. 
Usually a hot weather problem. Several rots can 
cause this. Most common is Rhizoctonia. 
Very little of this loss is experienced where clean 
cuttings are planted to soil that has just been 
thoroughly steamed. It is to prevent this type of 
_loss that we make it a point to steam all our 3- 
crops-a-year mum beds just prior to the summer 
planting. 
Too deep planting can aggravate this problem. 
Check over the rules for direct benching, page 2. 
2. Blindness, uneven bud set on winter or early 
spring mums. Not abnormally tall. 
Nearly always the result of too low tempera- 
tures. 
On late December normal season pomps (Garza 
and Snow) or on mums, this can usually be reme- 
died by holding 55° minimum night temperature 
till buds are well developed. After color shows 
many varieties can be dropped to 45° or even less. 
Lighted Mums flowered from January thru June 
need even higher temperatures to insure bud set: 
63° from planting till color shows 
52-55° or less after color shows 
Be sure that the temperature down among the 
plants is the same as at your thermometers. And 
watch cold ends! Have you checked your ther- 
mometers? 
3. On summer crops, buds form O.K. but are 
very slow developing—flower 4-5 weeks later, un- 
usually tall. 
Excessively high summer temperatures under 
the sateen will delay development of buds as much 
as 5-6 weeks. Even then, sprays will be uneven. 
Work at our state schools shows that if tempera- 
Wee 
WEST CHICAGO 
ILLINOIS 
19 inches high 30 days after benching of cutting. Allowing for height 
of cutting, this means about 12 inch a day. Mums that fall much short 
of this 12 inch a day rule of thumb are being shorted somewhere— 
either in quality of the original cutting, or in watering, feeding, etc. 
Exception: during dark winter weather they do grow slower. Frank 
Watanabe with the trowel. 
ture under the sateen is 95° for 3 hours nightly, 
bud development will be seriously delayed. 
Here are the practical steps that can be taken. 
a. During June-July-Aug. apply sateen 6 p.m. 
to 7 a.m. standard time to avoid the late after- 
noon heat. 
b. Keep some shade on the glass to cool the 
houses. 
c. Use early varieties (8 to 9 week response 
group) since they are much less affected by 
high temperatures. Varieties with a normal 
blooming date later than October 25 are shaky. 
d. Exhaust fans—expensive, but have helped 
some growers. 
Outdoor shaded Pomps under plastic mesh. Note the “Igloo” type roof support—and the sateen out on top of the Saran. If given adequate 
feed and water, Pomps of as good or better than greenhouse quality can be grown in this type of structure—for August-October flowering. 
Photo at Yoder Bros., Jake Miller and Geo. K. Ball in the photo. 
ae on 6 
ities ON 
