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

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your own stock, it is nice to have a conservatory in connection with your own store. It will not take a large amount of money and will increase your sales. (A good size is seventeen by thirty-five or forty feet long.) At the close of Mr. Bates' talk an opportunity was given to ask the following questions: Question—What would be the cost of building a greenhouse 25x100? Answer—Keep to standard sizes; you can get your materials from ten to fifteen per cent, less than if you go into special sizes. I would say $1.12 a square foot of ground covered, taking in your service building, masonry work, heating, benches, etc., would be an average estimate. Distance of hauling and other items may vary this figure. Q.—Is it more expensive to build a private greenhouse than a commercial one? A.—Yes, because it costs just as much to get your men from the factory and materials as it does for a big one. Q.—Do you install oil burners very much? A.—No. They are not successful as yet. So far they have not saved a dollar and have not cost any more. Q.—Have you many orders for overhead irrigating in greenhouses? A.—Only in vegetable houses. Overhead system is not appropriate for cut flowers. The growers say if you can go over their houses once a week and water, that is all the personal attention they need to give the place. If you water by the Skinner System one plant is the same as another and you cannot keep track of their condition as well. Q.—Do you install sub-irrigation benches? A.—No. Q.—Do you install many steam boilers suitable to be used in connection with sterilization. A.—Fifteen pounds for sterilization. Q.—What would you suggest in the way of greenhouses to keep a small retail trade going? A.—Two twenty by fifty Ridge and Furrow and then buy your roses and carnations from a wholesale house and raise the rest of the stock yourself, such as greens, sweet peas, snap-dragons, violets, etc. Q.—Do you build more semi-iron or iron houses? A.—At the present time we are building more iron, as you can buy them as cheap as semi-iron frames. P. M. 16

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especially if they are cast iron, as you might have a break in a section at some time when it would seriously inconvenience you, which is what generally happens in the coldest weather. You can either run both boilers or else cut one off. Roses are mostly grown in solid beds. When you have beds, ‘the only way you can heat them is to put heating pipes on the side, which causes red spider. A number of commercial growers are swinging their heating pipes underneath, so that they are not so close to the roses. 9 You can force plants raised in benches very much faster than in solid beds. Beds can be built of concrete or boarding. Benches should be built of No. 2 cypress. Benches will cost one-third of what entire structure costs. In constructing concrete benches, make legs of concrete; look out that you have plenty of drainage and place for water to run out. In regard to ventilation, never run over fifty feet if possible (you might possibly go as high as seventy-five). It gives you a better control of your crop. Your sunshine, your heat, and your ventilation are what make your stock sell better. If you do not keep your greenhouses in good repair, you will have trouble with glass breaking or cracking and things will not grow well. There should be one-eighth inch of putty between the glass and bar. A second coat of paint should be given after the structure is erected before the glass is set. When the glass is in, give it a third coat, and then you have given all laps a second coat and your putty a coat, which seals it. Do this every two years and you will never have a house with slipping glass or broken glass from vibration. If you putty with carbolic acid or a tar base the bar deteriorates and you cannot paint over it. The temperatures of houses will run as high as .130 deg. in summer, so the putty must be made to withstand this, while in winter you must reckon with temperatures below zero. Side ventilators can run one hundred feet. Vegetable house ventilators may run one hundred fifty feet, but in houses where you have to be careful of your temperature, like cut-flower houses, do not go over fifty feet. Cast iron boilers are cheaper for little houses. They are cheaper to install and will run from six o’clock at night to six or seven in the morning, provided you get a boiler that has sufficient coal area. For one thousand to two thousand feet of radiation, put in a square boiler. You can put on coal enough to carry heat for thirteen hours with a square boiler, but you can not do that with a round one. It is better to put in steam boilers if you grow to a size where there would be a requirement for five cast iron boilers. Hot bed ashes are not used as much as they used to be. People are specializing on one thing; therefore, beds and frames are not needed to such a degree as in private lines. In a commercial place you can start a large amount of your spring or Easter stock in your frames, and then give them a place in your greenhouse or else harden them off in your cold frame. In private places most of the vegetables are grown in cold frames. Suppose you enter the commercial field and intend to retail 15

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AN AFTERNOON WITH ORCHIDS The Seniors recently visited some orchid houses which contained several rare orchids and tropical plants. They were very cordially met and taken around by the manager, who answered the questions showered on him about the many unusual plants, both as to their Latin as well as to their common names. He took them through the Phalaenopsis house, where the Philippine orchids were found and then the Cattleya house, where many hybrids were in a fine display of bloom. The Cyprepedium were in the intermediate house. These are of less conspicuous color, brown and yellow. The Oncidium have long sp'kes with dainty butterfly-like blossoms. The Dendrobium orchids have elongated pseudo bulbs. The Vanda Coerulea is a heavenly blue orchid which blooms in November and December and was not in bloom at this time. In the stove house (which is kept at the highest temperature) he showed them some tropical plants which were brought from all over the world. Then he took them into the propagating house, where the benches were filled with many cuttings, especially the evergreen cuttings, which take from six weeks to sometimes eight months to callous over and to form roots. These houses are considered to have the best collection of orchids in this country. The Senior Class was glad of the opportu-nitv of having an insight into such an interesting place. M. E. T. GARDENS OF ROSES On Tuesday, February 5, we had our first Tuesday afternoon lecture of spring, 1923. It was an illustrated lantern-slide lecture obtained from the J. Horace McFarland Co., Mount Pleasant Press, Slide Department, Harrisburg, Pa., which, appropriate to its title, “In American Rose Gardens,” took us through some of the famous rose gardens of this country. It showed how the rose, the finest of all flowers, will thrive in the northern climate of New England as well as in the mild and sunny South—in the changeable climate of the Middle Western States as well as in the soft and balmy air of California and in the favorable climate of the Northern Pacific coast. The artistically colored pictures did justice to the beauty of the rose in all its forms and shades, no matter whether growing in a well-planned garden or in a plain back-yard, whether adorning the porch of a home or clambering gracefully over arbors, fences or stone walls, serving as a beautiful and distinctive boundary line or framing a beautiful view into the open country. The composer of the slides and the lecture was not satisfied to show just the perfected results of continued hybridization, the 17