of
tobacco dust for sprinkling are also used successfully applied directly
to the insects _on_ the plants, but my experience with most of these
has proved them next to worthless. (See also Chapter XVII.)

It is not nearly so interesting to read about the various greenhouse
operations as it is to _do them_. It is work of an entrancing nature,
and no one who had never taken a little slip of some new or rare plant
and nursed it through the cutting stage and watched its growth till the
first bud opened, can have an idea of the pleasure to be had. In the
next chapter I shall attempt to explain just how to handle some of the
most satisfactory flowers and vegetables, but the inexperienced owner of
a small greenhouse who wishes to make rapid progress should _practice_
with every plant and seed that comes his, or her, way, until all the
ordinary operations have become as easy as falling off a street car with
him. Mistakes will be made, and disappointments occur, of course, but
only through these can skill and efficiency be obtained.

CHAPTER XXIV

FLOWERS

There are a number of greenhouse crops which are easily within the reach
of the amateur who has at his disposal a small glass structure. One is
apt to feel that something much more elaborate than the simple means at
his hands are required to produce the handsome flowers or beautiful
ferns which may be seen in the florist's window. It is true that many
things are beyond his achievement. He cannot grow gigantic American
Beauties on stems several feet long, nor present his friends at
Christmas with the most delicate orchids; but he can very easily have
carnations more beautiful, because they will be fresher if not quite so
large, than any which can be had at the glass-fronted shops; and
cyclamen as beautiful, and much more serviceable, than any orchid that
ever hung from a precarious basket. To accomplish such results requires
not so much elaborate equipment as unremitting care--and not eternal
fussing but regular thought and attention.

There is, for instance, no more well beloved flower than the carnation,
which entirely deserves the place it has won in flower-lovers' hearts
beside, if not actually ahead of, the rose. As a plant it will stand
all kinds of abuse, and yet, under the care which any amateur can give
it, will produce an abundance of most beautiful bloom. Within a
comparatively few years the carnation, as indeed a number of other
flowers, has been deve