_Highlandlake, Colo._
Carnations want a cool, moist air, and cannot adapt themselves to the
high temperature and dry air of living rooms heated by coal in stoves
or furnaces. To raise the plants one should have a conservatory off the
living room, or at least an inclosed bay window.
Madeira Vine.
Will you kindly inform me through your “Letter Box” how to
treat a Madeira vine so it will produce blossoms? I have a vine
four years old, has never done very well until this winter, but
the foliage is beautiful and it seems strange that it does not
blossom. I have got it in a tin wash basin hung with strings
in the window, the sun shines on it from early in the morning
until three o’clock in the afternoon. It is trained out each
side of basin with strings and measures three feet across, and
hangs about one foot from the glass. I have trained it back and
forth from the basin to the curtain and it has locked itself
through the lace of the curtain. I want to know what I shall do
with it in the spring. I shall have to take down the curtain,
and will it injure the vine to cut it? I have been told that I
ought to clip this winter’s growth in the spring. I should like
to know why it does not blossom. Please let me know and confer
a favor.