. The American florist : a weekly journal for the trade. Floriculture; Florists. igo8. The American Florist. 659 Soil sterilization. In our issue of October 17, page 5G5, we gave some replies to a communica- tion sent to a number of well known growers respecting this subject. The re- plies showed conclusively that the major- ity of growers were not favorable to ster- ilization on general principles, though many favor it for soils for seed sowing. One well known grower gave it as his opinion that sterilization properly car- ried out is useful, but unfortunately did not give his ideas on how it
. The American florist : a weekly journal for the trade. Floriculture; Florists. igo8. The American Florist. 659 Soil sterilization. In our issue of October 17, page 5G5, we gave some replies to a communica- tion sent to a number of well known growers respecting this subject. The re- plies showed conclusively that the major- ity of growers were not favorable to ster- ilization on general principles, though many favor it for soils for seed sowing. One well known grower gave it as his opinion that sterilization properly car- ried out is useful, but unfortunately did not give his ideas on how it should be done, rather an important omission. This week John N. "Alay comes out strongly for sterilized soil and gives his reasons clearly, while the letters from other experts will also be read with interest: Answering your query about the steril- izing of soil, will say that we were per- haps the first to take up this practice, that is, to the extent of sterilizing all the soil in a couple of 100-foot greenhouses. We continued the practice, I think, for three years, until by tests we found that under our conditions and with our soil, we did not get as good results as we did with the unsterilized soil. It was our practice to handle the soil hot, getting it into the sterilizing benches as soon as it cooled sufficiently so that the men could stand on it to shovel. It was taken into the houses and immediately spread on the benches, as we found that if left piled or to stand in the sterilizer, it soured. We used it only to prepare soil for our rose benches, and our experience was that, while the plants started off very nicely and seemed to do well for a little while, it soon became evident that some- thing had been taken from the soil that was needed, and the unsterilized benches, made up, otherwise, from identically the same soil, planted with the same plants and treated as nearly as possible in the same manner, showed a marked increase in quality over the sterilized ones. W
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