104 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
however much temporary thickening might have been 
resorted to for immediate effect. 
But no : a belt of poplars is the highest plane to which 
these public commissioners have ascended. Plenty of 
expenditure on unused roads—for posterity, perhaps! 
interest on expenditure constant! useless bridge building, 
proposed tunneling, air lines to still more taxes, refec¬ 
tories, bear pits, rustic observation towers, monkey 
houses and merry-go-rounds! 
Such is the outcome of the plan advocated by engineer¬ 
ing magazines and practicing architects. Work so planned 
and so executed could not, I believe, be inflicted on any 
white race other than Americans, and not on them if they 
had time to think. 
Do look to Pittsburg and to Washington, and to any¬ 
where in Europe, or think a little, before you believe any 
such absurd idea as that which proclaims the architect 
and the engineer better fitted to embellish God’s earth 
than the educated, progressive and versatile gardener or 
even insinuates it. J. McP. 
Trenton, N. J. 
HARVESTING PEACHES IN GEORGIA. 
The foundation of the orchard of the Hale Georgia 
Orchard Co., Fort Valley, Ga., was an old cotton planta¬ 
tion of 900 acres, purchased in the summer of 1890, and 
six hundred acres were planted with a little over 100,000 
peach trees in the winter of ’91 and ’92, writes J. H. Hale 
in the American Agriculturist. It is all laid out in blocks 
1,000 feet long and 500 feet wide, with avenues running 
north and south, named after the peach-growing states of 
the Union, and streets running east and west, named after 
leading horticulturists of the country. A resident super¬ 
intendent, 30 or 40 negro assistants and 16 mules have 
kept up most thorough culture for the past three years. 
There was a full bloom on the orchard in the spring of 
’94, but a heavy frost the last of March destroyed all the 
fruit prospects. This year, the fourth summer after plant¬ 
ing, all the trees set a full amount of fruit, and during 
April and May 40 to 50 hands were employed in thinning 
out the surplus. Extra tenement houses, great packing 
sheds, 15 heavy spring wagons, 50,000 crates and 300,000 
fruit baskets were provided during May and June, and by 
the 20th of the month began the first harvest. We were 
picking and packing about 4,000 crates daily, and to do 
this work 350 hands and 60 mules were kept constantly 
employed from daylight in the morning until dark at 
night. No ten-hour system anywhere in this section of 
the South, the farm bell ringing always ten or fifteen 
minutes before sunrise. The destruction of the orange 
crop in Florida last winter has brought here a great num¬ 
ber of extra workers on fruits, and we have been overrun 
with applications for labor; so we have had our pick of 
the very best, and everything went along like clockwork. 
The fruit is carefully picked by gangs of men, who have 
an instructor over each party of eight or ten. It is then 
hauled to the great packing shed in low-down spring 
wagons, and here all over-ripe, ill-shapen, or fruit that is 
scarred in any way, is rejected and carted off to the ex¬ 
tent of 300 bushels daily. All of the perfect fruit is 
graded into two sizes, by deft-fingered women and girls, 
and then by others packed in four-quart baskets, six of 
which fill one crate, called a carrier. Each one of these 
baskets is labeled, as are also both ends of the crates. 
These are hauled to the railroad station in spring wagons 
with canvas covers to protect the fruit from heat, dust 
and rain. At the railroad station they are loaded into 
refrigerator cars, which hold from 525 to 600 crates each, 
and shipped to northern and western markets. The cost 
of picking, packing, crates, cartage, freight and refrigera¬ 
tion, amounts to about $500 on each car, and with a total 
output of about 80 cars, which we have had this season, 
the total cost of marketing the crop from this one orchard 
was over $40,000. 
The leading peach in this section is the Elberta, but 
rather too many of this one kind are planted in this and 
all surrounding orchards. The extra early sorts, like 
Alexander, are grown to great extent in this section of 
the South, but the first really good peach is the Tillotson, 
which in ordinary seasons ripens about the 5fh of June, 
but this year did not come on until the 20th. Following 
this the best peaches are St. John, Mountain Rose, Lady 
Ingold, Elberta, Belle of Georgia, and Late Crawford, 
which round out the season about the first of August. 
The peach crop in Houston county alone is giving em¬ 
ployment to fully 3,000 people, and all the streets leading 
to railroad stations are, during the picking season, daily 
lined with wagons and carts of all sizes and description 
hauling fruit to market. Buyers from nearly every city 
in the Union are here. 
FRUIT PLANTING IN THE EASTERN STATES. 
The San Francisco Call and some others of the boom 
sheets published in this state allege that fruit growing is 
“played out ” in the states east of the Rocky Mountains, 
and that California will have but little competition. 
Readers of the California Fruit Grower, however, know 
better, and know also in spite of frosts and other draw¬ 
backs fruit growing was never so vigorously prosecuted in 
the East as now. Advices from Michigan show that there 
will be over 500,000 fruit trees planted in the western part 
of that state alone this season, and that for sometime the 
number has been from 100,000 to 200,000 annually 
planted in new orchards. The same activity prevails in a 
dozen other states; and the outlook is that California 
will have the sharpest kind of competition from now for¬ 
ward. But we must produce better fruit than our eastern 
friends and get it into their markets in good condition. 
Here is where we must expect to reap our rewards—not 
in the lack of competition from eastern growers.— 
California Fruit Grower. 
