T II E G A R D E N M A G AZIN E 
July, 1915 
292 
Cement forms of large size and of various shapes can now be had from domestic manu- A garden seat of concrete on the simplest lines fits into any scheme of garden construction, 
facturers in many different colors. They fit appropriately into our garden schemes and can never be out of place 
In a case like this the owner should make 
his own sketches to be worked out by the 
carpenter and introduce outlines to suit 
his fancy, or monograms and symbols, or 
echo some salient design in the house. 
A simple bird shelter is a charming ad- 
dition to any lawn or planting and the bird 
house is equally decorative and, when 
occupied, enlivening. Here again the es- 
sential feature is that the architecture of 
the bird house shall harmonize with that 
of its surroundings and fit in with the lines 
of the composition — which is the one moral 
of this little article. 
THE WAITING GAME IN 
ORCHARDS 
payment of this hundred dollars plus Si 12 
for interest and $85 for land and water tax 
took $297 of the carpenter’s earnings for the 
first year. The second year when the two 
and a half acres of peaches were supposed to 
come into bearing, a late spring frost killed 
nearly all the blossoms and but a few dozen 
peaches were picked. So, for a second 
twelve months nearly $300 was paid out and 
not a dollar taken in. The past year, the 
third since the purchase was made, a crop of 
peaches was brought to maturity. 
The cost of harvesting and marketing it 
per box of six to eight dozen peaches was: 
Box material $ .08 
Picking 02 
Packing .025 
Hauling .05^ 
A Precautionary Note to the Unwary 
By F. L. CLARK, IOWA. 
TN BUYING a young orchard or raw 
land to set out to fruit trees there are 
several things to figure upon besides the 
profits which will pile up after the orchard 
begins to bear. Especially is this true in 
the Western irrigated fruit areas where the 
cost of land and water is high. 
The experience of an orchardist known to 
the writer in one of the Western fruit val- 
leys is a case in point and may serve as an 
illustration of what playing the waiting 
game in orchards means unless a good sized 
bank account is available. The man is a 
carpenter earning five dollars a day. He 
has a wife and three children. Up to three 
years ago the family had not only lived com- 
fortably upon the father’s earnings but 
enough had been saved to buy a home. 
Then, fired with the stories of the big money 
some of his neighbors were making in fruit 
and finding a rancher who had a five acre 
orchard which he would trade for a house 
in town, the man decided to buy. The 
price of the land was $450 an acre. The 
home was turned in at $850 and a mortgage 
for the remaining $1,400 given at 8 per cent., 
the current rate of interest. 
The orchard was in three-year old trees, 
half apples and half peaches. Unable to 
take care of the ranch himself with the 
family bread and butter depending upon his 
daily earnings, the man hired a neighbor 
at $100 a year to irrigate, cultivate and look 
after the trees while he himself continued to 
live in town and work at his trade. The 
Total $ .18 
Four hundred and forty boxes were 
This large cement urn is a type of American manufacture 
that has excellent proportions, and is every bit as good as 
the historical Italian article 
packed and shipped, 95 per cent, of them 
extra fancy Elbertas. The first returns 
from the commission firm which handled 
them were for 145 boxes. They read: 
Selling price $ 83.20 
Freight _ $ 43.50 ) „ 
Commission .... 8.30 | ^ ' 
Net $ 31.40 
or about 21^ cents a box for the 145. This 
left a margin of profit of only 3! cents a box 
above the mere expense of harvesting and 
selling. The returns received a little later 
from the remainder of the 440 boxes ranged 
from $.17 to $.25. When the final state- 
ment was in the orchardist found he was 
just $15.40 better off than he would have 
been if he had let the peaches rot on the 
trees. He had invested in the land $850 
plus three times $297 or $1,741 in all and 
received in return $15.40. The house 
which he had traded for the land would 
have rented at ten dollars a month with a 
clear profit above repairs, insurance and 
taxes of probably seven dollars. This for 
the three years would have amounted to 
$252. Considering this loss in with the 
expenditure of $1,741 the orchard in the 
three years has cost him $2,000. 
The man by his own confession is up 
against it. Taxes and interest will soon 
again be due and he has neither the money 
to pay them nor the heart to go on sinking 
more of his earnings which are needed for 
the actual family maintenance. Two al- 
ternatives face him; either to lose the land 
and all he has put into it or sell out. 
The story of the carpenter is the story of 
many others who are just now playing the 
waiting game in orcharding. There is money 
in fruit growing and lots of it, but in the 
case of the young orchard, it is for the man 
who is prepared financially and can spend 
heavily for several years with no returns. 
Rosa xanthina. Both double and single 
flowered forms of this rose were raised and 
are now growing and flowering in the Arnold 
Arboretum from seeds received in April, 
1908, from F. N. Meyer, through the U. S. 
Department of Agriculture. In my “ Story 
of the Modern Rose”, in last month’s 
number of The Garden Magazine, the 
statement that it “ was only introduced to 
cultivation a year ago” is, therefore, an 
error. — E. H. Wilson. 
