CHRYSANTHEMUM CULTURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20952, 15 February 1930, Page 7

CHRYSANTHEMUM CULTURE.

THE LURE OF AUTUMN’S QUEEN. TWO YEARS’ EXPERIENCE OP A ‘ NOVICE. A couple of years ago, on November 1, 1927, I caught the fever. To my surprise, a friend asked me to call and see_ his chrysanthemums. I had always believed that these glorious blooms could be produced only by the skill- of a professional specialist, and- in tropical houses. I went, I saw,,and was conquered. There and then I decided to grow chrysanthemums. I visited the shows, took notes of varieties, pestered my friends, worried, the editor of Amateur Gardening with all sorts of foolish queries, erected a greenhouse with a simple heating apparatus, begged and bought some plants, and by April I (note the date) I felt I was well on the way to winning the championship cup at the next show. Shortly after I discovered there was such a thing as “timing.” I had met the spectre of “ timing ” before. Motor cycling had long been a hobby of mine; but I soon found that timing a “ mag. ” was not nearly so complicated as timing a “ ’muni.” My temperature rose ‘to well over danger point, and the lon**suffenng editor of Amateur Gardenin'*, had to pay the penalty again. P At last the date of the show arrived, but, to my great disappointment, I found that one had to grow many more than 18 blooms to'enter for the championship class six vases Japs., distinct, three blooms to a vase. My day of triumph had, perforce, to be put off for another year. But I went to the show, and inwardly felt the greatest satisfactidn in discovering that at home in my little greenhouse there were a few blooms equal to anything in the show. My heart swelled with pride. I was going to win that cup yet. More shows, more notes, and more queries to. the editor of Amateur Gardening, but the geraniums, lobelias and calceolarias had to go in the bleak November air to make room for the chrysanthemums that were going to win that cup.

April, 1929, came, finding me with a greenhouse and frames all full of vigorous plants, numbered, dated, and named. I kn^ tlie lif °-history of each. November, 1929, came, and I had the blooms. Then another problem confronted me. How was I to get the flowers to the show miles away? Growing ’mums is comparatively easy; stopping and timing are but bogies to terrify the beginner; but transporting the blooms to the show was a problem for a War Office. I set to work, and, after many nights of toil, got them there, only to find that there was a new art to be learned—staging. I had to he content with bein' l, second in the cup; but, having poked my nose in and under the vases of the winner, and learned something of the artifices of the old hand, I mean to win that cup next year. But to do so will cost me many heart aches lam sorry to say it, but m this end of the world Prime* Camera is the reigning favourite. Sheer bulk counts for everything. Much against my will, I shall have to worship at the shrine of size.

lM ;\/ M * r " arct Sar S™t! you are a veritable Venus—beauty incarnate; but you are not a daughter of Annk;' you must be sacrificed to this fetish, tins apothesis of mere size. And so must you, Marjorie Woolman; and you, too, Mrs A. Holden and Editli Gav-.ll! i shall have to court the loose Mauretania and the unkempt Mrs B. Carpenter Ine judges rave over Mrs B. Carpenter, vvitli a circumference of three feet—as if beauty and charm were centred entirely in tlie girth at the hips. And Miss Ada Ellis! I am somewhat doubtful of you. You are the apple of my eye; but why, or why don’t you put on flesh—-when flesh counts for everything. Not once have you tipped the beam at 20 stone. It will break my heart to part with you, but I have no room m my harem for Beauty.' I must have embonpoint, and plenty of it. A,l^-i. no Y r, for , m J' disappointments. Mrs Gilbert Drabble has failed me—or perhaps, I had better say, I have failed Mrs Diabble. At her best a thing of matchless beauty. What chrysanthemum grower has not dreamed of her closely incurving marble arms? But with me she looked like a drowned pom—a hairy shaggy lump of ugliness. And so with Mrs K. C. Bulling At a local show one grower among°a very inferior Jot of blooms showed five blooms of Mis R. C. Pulling that have haunted me ever since. What is the secret?— Amateur,” in Amateur Gardening.