FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
47 
healthy condition. No most certainly 
not. What I do mean is that the orchard 
planted in soil adapted to the growth of 
peaches, that is well cultivated and cared 
for from the day it is planted, that is 
rightly fertilized and fruit properly thin¬ 
ned, picked at the right stage of maturi¬ 
ty, carefully handled, packed and ship¬ 
ped under refrigeration, will vindicate 
the statement that I have made. It has 
done it for the Griffing Florida Orchard 
Company and will do it for others. If 
the same careful painstaking attention is 
given to the growing and marketing that 
is given by our successful Horticulturist 
and trucker to the growing and market¬ 
ing of oranges and the tender vegetable 
crops, that has proved the backbone and 
the chief support of our State. In the 
brief time allotted for the reading of this 
paper I am not going to attempt touching 
on the' details of planting, pruning and 
cultivation, these are primary points 
known to all horticulturists. 
What we want is to interest more peo¬ 
ple in peach growing, then a few words 
about the selection of the orchard site, 
the treating of the diseases, and last but 
not least, the harvesting and shipping. 
We need five hundred carloads of 
Florida peaches a year to sufficiently in¬ 
troduce them in the great markets of our 
country, so that even a small percentage 
of the fruit eating, fruit loving people 
will learn to know, remember, and recog¬ 
nize them and call for them from their 
fruiters so long as they are to be had in 
the markets. How many markets know 
them this way now? One! Just one! 
Philadelphia is the only city that it can 
be said any perceptible number of the con¬ 
sumers recognize the merits of our Flori¬ 
da peach, and last year over forty cars of 
our Florida peaches were marketed there. 
Each day leading the market. Many of 
these cars were held in storage from two 
to three weeks. I was on the market one 
morning when there was over thirty cars 
of Elbertas displayed and sold, and that 
morning two carloads of The Griffing 
Florida Orchard Company pack of Imper¬ 
ial peaches were sold from the cold sto¬ 
rage without the buyers even examiining 
or looking at a crate at a price 25 cents 
above the price paid for the Elbertas on 
the dock. Why? Because these buyers 
knew that they had customers that would 
have no others so long as these lasted. 
It is not my object to pit our Florida 
peaches against the famous Elberta or 
to encroach upon the season of the Elber¬ 
ta in Georgia, Alabama or Texas, but I 
do want to condemn to everlasting doom, 
that miserable class known as the Per¬ 
sian type, comprising such varieties as 
Amsden, Alexander, Early Beatrice, and 
of the later introductions, Greensboro, 
Triumph, Sneed, etc. As Downing once 
said of this class of peach “a peach quick 
to ripen and quick to rot.” In fact, they 
are green, ripe and rotten at one and the 
same time, the under or shaded side will 
be green, the side next to the sun and 
light will be ripe, and the blossom end 
rotten. Delightful conditions to find in 
a fruit to create and build up a demand 
for it. Yet, hundreds of carloads of this 
class of peaches are shipped from Georgia, 
Alabama and Texas yearly. So soon as 
Florida produces sufficient peaches to be 
really felt and known upon the market, 
the demand for this class of peaches will 
cease and good Florida peaches will bring 
good prices with a strong demand. Ful¬ 
ly ninety per cent, of the fruit eating peo¬ 
ple supplied from our great markets do 
