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

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“ THE IDLE RICH ” When I vast riches would acquire, I get some paper and some pens, Sit down before the kitchen fire, And spend the evening keeping hens. Next evening I would richer grow, And soon annex a sum to suit. I get a catalog or so And spend the evening raising fruit. Exchange. SOME GLADIOLUS EXPERIMENTS By A. Greene Horne, H. J. The writer of these notes has called himself a farmer and a lover of natural history; and has always been more fond of plants than of animals. He has grown some flowering plants, Gladioli among them, as well as the so-called more useful crops. Being an admirer of the. “Glads” for their orchid-like beauty as well as for their ease of culture, I purchased one or two packets of seeds about eight years ago and sowed them in my garden. As a result I obtained a small quantity of bulbs, varying in size from a little more than one-eighth to one-half inch in diameter. These were replanted the following spring, and a few bloomed that summer; not good spikes, but enough to show somewhat the color of tiie flowers and something of the habit and arrangement of the blooms on the spike, etc. That fall I had good-sized bulbs, or more correctly speaking, corms and some cormels. The next year they showed up in good form and demonstrated their characteristics as to color, size, shape, substance, placing on the spike, height, keeping quality, vigor, earliness or lateness or bloom, and all those things which make for value or otherwise, from both aesthetic and commercial standpoints. As varieties do not “come true” from seed but almost invariably differ from the parent, owing perhaps to many generations of cross-pollination, an infinite number of varieties may be produced, good, bad and indifferent, by growing seedlings. Being interested to see what some of the more choice kinds would produce, I saved seed from them and planted. And when the resulting plants came to blooming I had many surprises, and a few handsome flowers, but all 9

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poem in a newspaper, with no credit given to any other publication. When the Garden Magazine saw the poem in Wise-Acres, they promptly informed the palpitating Staff that they had infringed a copyright, and it would require the payment of $100 to soothe the Garden Magazine!! Fortunately the School's attorney was able to soothe said magazine by much less expensive methods, and the trouble blew over so quietly that the editor's notes hold no record of the settlement. The growth of the School is noted in later issues, as in November, 1914, the completion of the two greenhouses added onto the original one is mentioned. The present “Dorm was a thrill which occupied parts of several pages in different numbers. On May 6th, just after the first Wise-Acres appeared, the ground was staked off for the building. Although promised for January 1, 1915, it is in the June number that we find this entry in the School Notes: “April 26.—Moving Day! With one accord and a Henry Ford, we gaily made our long-delayed entry into the new building. It was all very strange at first, but now that the smell of fresh paint has worn off, and some of our misplaced belongings have come to light, we begin to feel less like visitors, and more like permanent residents. The paper was discontinued for a year or so during the war. But aside for this slight and necessary interim, the back numbers bring to light many interesting, instructive and entertaining articles. Some of the titles that one notes as holding vast possibilities of information are: “The Flora of Hawaii”. “Through the War Zone in War Time . “Some Recently Extinct Birds . “Dahlias . “The Outlook in the Field of Horticulture . “Poisonous Plants . “A Paying Poultry Plant . “Flowering Bulbs for the House . One longs for room to reprint many of these for the benefit of the newer students. The humorous sallies, quotations from Exchanges, or from the ever-bright and scintillating wits of our own students, appeared as “Smiles for a while, later under the title of “Relish for the Wise . Only a year ago the truly unique and peculiarly fitting heading of “The Compost Pile made . its debut. Improving with age, one would say! All in all, Wise-Acres has had a career of ten prosperous and we trust useful years of existence, and we can heartily wish it many more. E. C.

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things considered, none really superior to my original stock, after two years' work with them. I then resorted to hand pollenizing, following instructions given by a neighboring grower. The method followed was to go out in the early morning, and with scissors clip off the end of the petals from a bud of the female parent selected, choosing a bud just starting to open, removing about three-fourths of an inch of the tip, opening out the flower and clipping out the anthers. I then found a bloom of the variety desired to furnish pollen, bearing pollen of the right maturity; the sign of this condition being the anthers burst longitudinally with plenty of fresh pollen showing, and the anthers not too dry. With a small sharp knife blade, I scraped off pollen and transferred it to the stigma of the flower just clipped. The most important thing after this procedure is to tie a hood or cover as muslin or cheesecloth, over the whole flower to prevent further pollination by insects, and then to tag the plant, and make the appropriate record in a notebook. The process may be repeated with other blooms, and with the same crosses or different ones. The beginner in this line of work may be surprised to see how early in the morning the bumble-bees will begin their work of cross-pollination, working their way into a slightly opened bud in search of their breakfast of nectar with astonishing dexterity and persistency, accomplishing Nature's object of cross-fertilization at the same time. One needs to be on the job early to be ahead of these industrious workers and non-observers of union hours. They are the true daylight savers, often camping over night within an open bloom. Growing the seedlings is a developer of patience, or of disgust, as the case may be. A fine, rich, continuously moist soil, a covering of about one-half inch over the seed which has been soaked in warm water for a few days, patient waiting for the somewhat slow germination, down on one's knees to pull the tiny weeds which are apt to appear first, and at length the delight of seeing the wee green sword-blades pricking through here and there. The seed does not all germinate at once, like turnips, for instance; but unless very favorable conditions continue, it may be near the end of the season ere the blades appear, showing an exasperating indifference to the flight of time and the short remaining period of growth before frost. The mature bulbs may be planted as early in the spring as the ground is workable, in rows two to three feet apart, and four to six inches in the row, or even closer if the space is limited. They should be covered with six to eight inches of soil, a light sandy soil calling for a deeper covering. I have seen them scattered in a trench, higgledy-piggledy, any old way, perhaps a dozen or twenty to the foot of row, and 10