THE PACKING HOUSE. 
Our packing house was planned and built to 
give the very best facilities for making up orders, 
packing plants and getting them to purchasers in 
the most perfect condition. It is 42x100 feet and 
each variety has its own separate stall where the 
plants are counted and tied in bunches and labeled, 
so it is impossible to mix varieties. 
The atmosphere of the room is kept cold and 
damp by the floor being saturated with water so 
that in the short time used in counting plants and 
making up orders the roots never show the slight- 
est dryness. The crates for packing are made of 
tough, light wood, after our own design so that 
leaves are exposed to air while the roots are imbed- 
ded in pure, damp spaghnum moss and grow while 
on their way to their destination and arrive at any 
point between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in 
perfect condition. 
Our men have become experts in packing and 
each department is under an experienced foreman 
and all under an efficient superintendent of many 
years' experience, so that all orders are filled with 
the utmost precision. It is absolutely impossible 
to dig and pack plants in the open field, exposed 
to sun and wind, as is very generally done by plant 
growers, and have them reach the purchaser fresh 
and vigorous. You want every plant to grow and 
have 110 vacancy in the field and there will be none 
with these plants if ypu set them properly. 
PLANTS FOR THE SOUTH. 
All of the leading truck and berry gowers in 
the south use only northern grown seeds and plants 
for the reason that the northern summers are very 
short and hot and they acquire the habit of ripen- 
ing their fruit several days earlier than the same 
variety propagated at the south. 
The new runners will retain these characteris- 
tics for three or four years so that southern planters 
can get the benefit of this and propagate their own 
plants for that length of time and then renew their 
propagating beds with northern plants and thus 
be in the market several days in advance and se- 
cure the high prices, making a big difference in 
profits with very little extra expense. 
The spring at the north being later than the 
south, plants remain entirely dormant that much 
longer and will endure shipment and transplanting 
in this condition with perfect safety and when 
put in the warm soil will spring into a fine growth 
at once. The old foliage of dormant plants is 
nearly all removed by trimming and packing and 
the new roots start immediately so the plant be- 
comes established with feeding roots before it has 
foliage to be affected by the sun. 
We take up plants as soon as frost is out of the 
ground— usually about the middle of March 
Northern Growers can not use southern planU 
successfully because they are in fruit in the south 
before ground in the north can he fitted for trans- 
planting. While dormant plants can be kept even 
weeks in mild weather by heeling in, yet after 
they have commenced to grow, it is difficult to 
save them in this way. 
From points as far south as Maryland and Ken- 
tucky they are obliged to ship as early as February 
and March and even then plants have coiriinenced 
to grow, so it is almost impossible to heel them in 
so as to keep them during the freezing weather of 
those months at the north. If shipiiu ms were de- 
layed until northern ground n.uld l>e fitted, the 
fruit would be half grown and at this period there 
IS a change in the roots so tliat they very rarely 
succeed when transplanted at that time. 
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