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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
PEACH PLANTATIONS IN THE SOUTH. 
J. H. Hale, of South Glastonbury, Conn , writing 
from Fort Valley, Ga., to The Florist 's Exchange, says : 
“Round about I'ort Valley (which, by the way, is 30 
miles southwest of Macon and 20 miles north from 
Andersonville) are some thirty individuals or stock com¬ 
panies, owning each a peach orchard from 100 to 800 
acres in extent, some 50,000 in all, besides many small 
blocks of from 100 to 3,000 trees on almost every plan¬ 
tation for miles around. The early varieties, like 
Alexander and Waterloo, ripen here the last of May; 
following these come Yellow St. John, Rivers, Tillot- 
son, Mt. Rose and Early Crawford for the June crop, 
while in early June come such fine late sorts as Elberta, 
Thurber, Belle of Georgia, ending the season about the 
20th of the month, as growers in this section aim to get 
in their fruits and be out of the markets before the fav¬ 
ored peach sections of the Gentral North begin to 
show up. A large party of nursery and fruit men from 
Ohio and the Gentral West were down here looking over 
the fruit and nursery interests of this section. Of well- 
known men in the party were Frank Withoff, secretary 
of the Chain of Nurseries Co. ; N. H Albaugh, presi¬ 
dent of Albaugh Nursery Co., of Tadmor ; N. H. 
Ohmer, of Dayton, well known as originator of the 
Gregg raspberry, and for some years president of Ohio 
Horticultural Society ; Brodenstein & Arrick, of the 
Colraine Grape Co., stockholders in the various Ohio 
orchard companies located hereabout. This is a won¬ 
derful country for propagating roses in the open ground, 
and D. F. Reese, of Springfield, Ohio, has been pros¬ 
pecting for a hundred-acre tract of land, all of which is 
to be used for rose propagation. Budding can be car¬ 
ried on through three or four months of summer, and ( 
buds put in as late as the middle of August often can be 
made to grow two feet or more before winter, while buds 
inserted earlier often make bushes almost too large 
except for fancy retail trade. Berckmans & Son, of 
Augusta, have long had the reputation of producing 
some of the strongest roses grown in America, and as 
the conditions here are still more favorable, I doubt not 
that in a few years Mr. Reese will build a rose nursery 
here that will astonish the North with its products, both 
in quality and price. Land is cheap, stocks grow freely, 
and labor is so faithful and cheap. Negro boys at 40 
and 50 cents per day learn to bud readily, and soon do 
’’good work. We are using many of them in the peach 
and plum nursery with great success. We began bud¬ 
ding peaches the last of May, and kept it up through 
June. Stocks have now been cut back and the buds 
are coming on rapidly, and by constantly cultivating the 
ground every week till October, can grow June buds 
here three to four feet in one season. I shall keep up 
summer budding a week or two yet, then bud Japan plums 
on Mariana stocks, where they grow readily as summer 
buds, and later put in a lot of both plum and peach as 
dormant buds. Peach and plum also grow equally well 
here from winter growth, so that for open field culture 
propagation can go on here for about seven months of 
the 5 ear. 
^ “Ten years ago Sam. Rumph’s Willow Lake Nursery 
was the only one in the whole Southwestern Georgia sec¬ 
tion. His success in his peach orchard venture started 
a few of his neighbors at orcharding, which in turn 
started two or three small peach nurseries. Then our 
coming here and planting out a great peach orchard of 
over 100,000 trees attracted the attention of other 
northern men, till within five miles of us now are several 
great companies ; Albaugh Company have 80,000 trees ; 
Troy Fruit Company, 30,000 trees ; Ohio Fruit Land 
Company, 40,000 trees ; Fort Valley Company, 10,000; 
Arrick Grey Company, 10,000 ; Melon City Company, 
30,000; Oak Ridge Company, with 40,000, nearly all 
to plant many more the coming winter. These com¬ 
panies have from five to ten stockholders each, and in 
nearly every company is one or more nurserymen (with 
their usual “get there” to have a finger in most every 
pie of a horticultural flavor) to help out on operating 
expenses till the orchard should be of suitable age to 
give returns.^ We at first began the propagation of 
Mariana plum stocks and peach trees on an extended 
scale, and the other companies are following in the same 
line, and so it has come about that several great nur¬ 
series have sprung up here all at once, and to-day within 
two miles of where I write can be seen growing millions 
upon millions of young peach and plum trees, in straight 
nursery rows that, to set, would do the heart of a 
northern man good. 
“Besides these millions of trees, there are many 
thousands of grapes, apricots and pears. The Hoyts, 
of New Canaan, Conn., are here propagating 50,000 of 
their great Green Mountain grape. The Harris apricot, 
so highly prized in Western New York, is being propa¬ 
gated in large blocks. Altogether it would appear that 
a great new nursery center was about springing up here. 
While at Rumph’s a few days ago he called my atten¬ 
tion to a block of 1,300 Le Conte pear in orchard, just 
loaded down with the new ripening fruit ; he pointed 
out the great difference in the loads of fruit different 
trees were carrying. All through the South the Le 
Conte has nearly always been grown from cuttings, but 
Rumph propagated a lot on French stocks, and then 
when this orchard was planted mixed up a hundred of 
them with the trees grown from cuttings and planted 
in one corner of the orchard. Away off, on the other 
side., one whole row w^as planted with trees on the 
French roots, and now the fruiting results are so marked 
in favor of these stocks as to attract great attention to 
the subject. Every tree where they are mixed up can 
