Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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IN THE SCHOOL GREENHOUSES By One of the Students “In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things.” It is most natural for us to think of flowers as belonging only to the out-of-doors. Hot houses and greenhouses seem on first thought an unnatural state, but when we study the life history of plants, we find that in manv, many ways their little needs are similar to our own. By sheltering them from the rough elements, and by giving each plant only the food and conditions which make for its best development, we are only aiding Nature in her struggle to produce perfection. When managed carefully and intelligently “The Garden Under Glass” can be made a bit of Paradise, wherein many thousands of little lives cnme forth in wonderful beauty, almost startling us by their quick response to kindness and care. When our class entered the School in February of last year, the greenhouses were in the midst of their winter glory. How well we remember those wonderful beds of antirrhinums! We didn’t know they could be so beautiful. And the sweet pea bed—a gorgeous mass of blending colors, the stalks so tall and strong, that later when we opened the ventilator permanently they grew right through. From a little distance it looked as though the greenhouse was so joyous with vegetation that it had simply burst. Then there were the sweet-scented carnations, and the white and rosy cyclamens, and so many other flowers with names at first hard to remember, but with colors and scents that could never be forgotten. How the Greenhouses Are Arranged The greenhouses are divided into six sections. Two cool houses, an intermediate house, a propagating house, a fernery, and a potting shed. The temperature of the cool houses is that of the out-of-doors on a comfortable summer day, while the intermediate house is slightly warmer. The propagating house is somewhat oppressive to us, but the little cuttings and the germinating seeds think it is just about right. The fernery has a whiff of the deep woods, and the potting shed is always comfortable. In the first cool house are the individual vegetable gardens, each student being allotted a small plot to plant and care for during the fall, winter and spring. In these gardens we usuallv grow tomatoes, cauliflower and parsley, all of which thrive well under glass. Along one side of the house are the geraniums—a mass of bloom in all seasons of the year. In this house also we force the calla lilies for Easter time, and the rhubarb for the late winter. Still another feature of this house is our much-prized fig tree, actually bearing fruit. In the second cool house we grow the carnations, sweet peas, and various other plants which prefer a slightly cool temperature. The intermediate house always contains the greatest variety of flowers, because it is this temperature which most closely assimilates

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WISE-ACRES Vol. VI November, 1921 No. 24 Published Quarterly by the Students ofthe School of Horticulture for Women, Ambler, Pa.—Elizabeth Leighton Lee, Director Entered at Ambler P. O. as Second-Class Matter Under Act of March 3, 1879. STAFF Editor-In-Chief, Eleanor F. Fullerton. Asst. Editor, Elinor Mathews Acting Adv. Mgr., Elizabeth Swing Business Manager, Edith Diehl One Dollar a Year Single Copy, Twenty-five Cents EDITORIAL JOTTINGS We are sorry to hear that Miss Nicolson, our instructor in Floriculture and Vegetable Gardening, is leaving at the end of the year. Miss Nicolson has presided over the greenhouses and gardens for three years, and she has sent out a group of well-trained, enthusiastic students. She has done more than teach the theory of growing, more than train hands. She has preached the gospel of love and understanding, and the vital necessity for a deep-seated enthusiasm if your work is going to amount to the most. We have reprinted in this issue a brief article by Miss Edna M. Gunnell, who was a former greenhouse instructor at the School. We were interested to learn, through the Journal of the English Farm and Garden Association, that Miss Gunnell had been appointed Horticultural Superintendent to the County of Devon. It sounds like a pretty important post, and we are glad Miss Gunnell is the first woman to fill it. Ula Fay has found a mighty interesting job. She is1 an Occupational Aide at the U. S. Public Health Service Hospital No. 35, in St. Louis. She expected to have floricultural work when she went there, but discovered very little equipment. So far, her activities have been confined to the filling of window boxes, making of hanging baskets and planning enthusiastically for the greenhouse which she hopes to have soon.

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that of our summer time. Here we grow the antirrhinums, the primula.-,, the calendulas, the freesias, the stock, the begonias, the lupins, the petunias, and many other beauties which thrive and bloom all through the winter. In the very early spring this house is still further brightened by the narcissus, the tulips, and the hyacinths of Easter time. Here also is the home of a very thrifty oleander. The propagating house, as its name implies, is where our seeds germinate and our little cuttings take root. For this latter purpose there is a row of propagating benches, filled with sand and supplied with bottom heat. Here also we grow our finest tomatoes. On a trellis over one of the doorways leading into this house is a very lovely allamanda, whose golden trumpet flowers burst forth every now and then, firmly believing that they are in their native home in the tropics. The fernery, in addition to containing ferns and palms, and some enormous rubber plants, is also the home of our lilies, our winter roses, and a number of thrifty and fragrant heliotropes. Here also we force larkspur, columbine, foxgloves, iris, and other perennials with remarkable success. On one side is a fern wall where we have planted maidenhair ferns, lobelia, and various other delicate hanging plants. When it becomes a mass of green, and the tiny blue lobelia flowers peep out here and there, it is a very pretty sight indeed. Happy Winter Days Now for the potting shed on a working day; a cold snowy winter day when, mingled with our happy, busy chatter, there is a sense of awe that we should be gardening when all the outside world is cold and dormant. On one side of the potting shed is a long, wide bench with box-like openings below containing various kinds of soil—loam, sand, leaf mold, etc. Each student has a locker with all necessary implements. It is here that we sow the seeds in flats, prick then , out later into second flats, then to thumb pots, and later into larger and larger pots till the plant has reached blooming and maturity. Of course, this is not all. There are many other tasks for our happy winter days. The little plants must be fed to encourage the'r rapid growth and timely blooming. Every day we must give water wherever it is needed, and the plants are cultivated constantly to conserve the moisture, aireate the soil, and keep down the weeds and disease. Greenhouse pests, the aphis, the red spider, the mealy bug, etc., must be watched for and immediately discouraged with sprays. And so the days'fly by and before we are aware of it we are Getting Ready for Outdoor Planting Here we come to another feature of the usefulness of the greenhouse. A number of our cool season vegetables, such as head lettuce, early cabbage, and early cauliflower, could not be brought to maturity before the excessive heat of summer if it were not for the fact that the seeds are started under glass so that the little plants are ready to set out as soon as the frost is out of the ground. Also, some of our warm season vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, sweet potatoes, etc., could not mature in our short season if they were not started in the greenhouse and transplanted. The Scime is true ol