Mr. Nurseryman: 
Your AHention Please 
We have been brokers in Camellias for seven 
years, buying in car lots each season from practi¬ 
cally every nursery in the south who grow Camel¬ 
lias and Azaleas, we are in a position to offer some 
constructive criticism. 
We buy Camellias and replant them here in our 
nursery to condition them so that the loss of plants 
to the customers may be reduced to a minimum, to 
clean up scale infested plants and to clean up fun¬ 
gus diseases. 
Our losses are due to three faults of which most 
nurserymen are guilty. First, failure to transplant 
or root prune after the second or third years 
growth; secondly, from plants which die off due to 
infestation of Formopsis blight; thirdly, from scale 
pests of all species. 
In buying Camellies it is not possible to deter¬ 
mine if a plant has a fiberous root system, or that 
it is infested with Form*opsis blight, so long as 
these plants remain undisturbed in the nursery they 
will continue to thrive, but the moving of such plants 
will result in immediate loss of some and gradual 
dying off of others. 
To give you an insight into actual losses due to 
this negligence, we cite a few cases, of 15 plants 
5’-6’ tall at $10.00 each plus freight on 400 miles 
rail, our loss is 12 plants, due to poor root system, 
again out of two cars bought from another nursery 
our loss of outright dying was 65 specimins 3’-5’ 
which cost us from $4.00 to $6.00 plus freight, due 
to poor root system, out of another car our loss was 
15 plants valued from $3.00 to $20.00 each due to 
Formopsis blight, all these plants died within 90 
days after purchasing. Most losses are due to fail¬ 
ure to transplant and from Formopsis Blight. Sev¬ 
en years ago very little Formopsis was to be found, 
today practically all nurseries are infested with this 
very dangerous disease. 
Gentlemen, let’s put our houses in order, before 
we destroy consumers’ confidence in our products. 
Let’s devote more time and money to growing qual¬ 
ity stock which will give satisfaction to our custo¬ 
mers, rather than to grow our stock fast and with 
ever increasing volume. Our failure to do this will 
encourage others to enter cur field, by men who 
know that the public will be served, increased com¬ 
petition with better quality stock than we can offer 
will ultimately destroy us. 
Thank you, 
G. G. GERBING. 
woBmamm 
