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Teany | 
The question has been asked, not once, but a number 
of times. “What’s the big idea of all this no charge 
advice? Doesn’t it take a lot of time, and what do 
you get out of it?” 
Good batch of questions! 
Of course it takes a lot of time. And we don’t dirty 
up all of these pages just for the heck of it. Instead, 
if we can help you to make a fast buck, growing the 
things we are monkeying with here, you’ll have to 
buy your liners somewhere. Maybe you'll buy them 
from us, and that way maybe a nickle will dribble 
down the line into our coffers. So the whole motive 
of our cacaographical (scribbling, sir) efforts is 
purely and simply the wickest of all wrong-doing, — 
selfishness. We want the nickle. 
We hope we aren’t being tedious with our continuous 
banging on this same old note. This one will be about 
ericaceous types of plants again. Was in ’52, ’53 and 
’54, too. But this time we’ve worked out a new angle, 
so maybe it will be worth the time it takes to read it 
after all. 
Before we get into this thing too far, we’d like to 
remind you that if we were so darn smart we’d be 
rich. So use your own judgment if you follow 
through on any of these ideas. 
About a third of our business is growing Azaleas, 
Rhododendrons and other ericaceous plants from 
seeds. If you have ever seen these little fellows 
during their first several months, you'll agree that 
there are times when they are small. While they are 
in this miniature stage they “respond” quickly to 
treatments of various kinds. ‘‘Respond” is hardly 
the correct word, because sometimes a flat of seed- 
lings will be but a memory before they have had half 
a chance to experience the fine things we are trying 
to do for them. But that’s how we learn. 
The fact that the small plants do react so quickly to 
soils, soil conditioners, fertilizers, and _ spray 
materials, helps us much in attempting to find out 
quickly what they will tolerate, what helps, and what 
they will have no parts of. The results are usually 
more obvious and apparent than could be had with 
larger plants during a given period of time. Quite 
naturally, as a result of trials, with the different 
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