THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
35 
before we were up in the morning, my mind went back to the time 
when, with the widowed mother and loving sisters, we boys began our 
first efforts in fruit culture. We had only a small hand push-cart as a 
means of transportation ; one hoe, a shovel and a spade were our only 
tools, and our capital was locked up in the soil of the old farm and the 
latent energies of two boys, anxious to carry their share of life’s bur¬ 
dens. I remember how the first strawberry bed was planted, midst 
the sleet and rain of one cold April day, and the crop marketed the 
next season at the village store for some eight or ten dollars ; and then 
my mind flew back again to the past season, when the entire product 
of our fruit farms sold for more than #100,000. 
For years, while we were steadily increasing the small-fruit business, 
every dollar that was made—except those required for a very meagre 
living, subscriptions to leading agricultural papers, for traveling ex¬ 
penses to horticultural and agricultural meetings, or for visits to farms 
of the most successful fruit-growers we could hear of, especially where 
new varieties were being tested—was 
put back on the farm, either in new 
plants, fertilizers or labor. Farm pro¬ 
ducts and cash income have increased; 
the great Georgia orchard of nearly 
1,000 acres has been established, provid¬ 
ing a winter home to which we can go 
and always find plenty of congenial work 
when the Connecticut farm is frost 
bound ; and a nursery business has been 
founded that annually produces million 
of trees. A farm adjoining our own 
here was purchased last year and ex¬ 
tensively planted to Japan plums, and 
now another adjoining farm has been 
purchased. As I write we have just 
completed a perfect system of water 
works for irrigation as well as domestic 
use. 
By special arrangement with the Hart¬ 
ford street railway, which has a trolley 
line past our farm, last summer a switch 
was put in here and three special cars 
fitted up exclusively for our own use. 
Day after day these cars were sent off to 
market loaded with fruits, thus making 
ours the first fruit farm in America to 
adopt electricity and steel rails in the 
transportations of crops direct from the 
farm to consumers. Express and freight 
matter of all kinds will be received and 
shipped from the farm over the same 
line, and we believe our business is on a 
belter basis to-day than any other like 
enterprise in America. 
From the earliest beginnings, all the 
way along up, we have heard the talk 
that the “fruit business would be over¬ 
done.” Production has been enormously stimulated and increased, 
but except in rare instances, the demand for fine fruits has always 
been in excess of supply. Our people, the most wealthy and appre¬ 
ciative of any on the face of the globe, are yearly growing more 
cultivatated and refined. The love and desire for fine fruits and flowers 
goes with this refinement, and must mean an ever-increasing demand 
for our choicest products ; wherefore we can but believe that in the 
years that are to come broader opportunities await those who are to 
follow than ever greeted us in our gradual evolution “From a Push- 
Cart to a Trolley Car.” 
The illustration on page 36 represents a section of the large Geor¬ 
gia orchard and nursery of G. II. A J. II. Hale, South Glastonbury. 
Conn., looking north from top of packing shed. The rows are over a 
mile in length. The nursery of 200 acres is Far at the right, with Japan 
plums, peaches and pears in straight rows, nearly half a mile in length. 
Aside from the 100,000 peach trees in the view, the Hales annually 
grow 3,000,000 Marianna plum stocks and over 1,500,000 peach, plum, 
and apple trees in nursery, for wholesale trade only. 
WASTED ORCHARDS. 
The Gardeners' Magazine , London, has been publishing 
a series of articles on the wasted orchards of England. It 
says: 
With the report on the county of Worcester, which appears in the 
current issue, our special commissioner will, for the present season, 
bring to a close his articles on English orchards, which have created an 
immense amount of interest far beyond the boundaries of the counties 
on which he has reported. We have observed with much satisfaction 
the attention they have received—more particularly in the principal 
fruit-growing centres, for they reveal a state of things anything but 
creditable to the farming industry of this country. It is no new tale 
that our special commissioner has had to tell us; but he has thrown 
much fresh light upon the present aspect of fruit growing in the mor e 
important English counties, and has con¬ 
clusively proved that the industry, as a 
source of income, has in many districts 
been wholly neglected or so conducted as 
to render profitable results impossible. 
He has given us evidence of apathy and 
ignorance in the counties which can 
properly claim to be the most advanced 
in a knowledge of profitable fruit pro¬ 
duction ; he has shown that in the others 
there are large areas of land under fruit 
trees which, by reason of their unsatis¬ 
factory condition, cannot give even a 
moderate return for the space they oc¬ 
cupy, and he has been able to indicate 
that the whole of the counties on which 
he has reported have possibilities in the 
production of fruit, of which but few 
have an adequateidea. It is not neces¬ 
sary we should recapitulate the principal 
points raised by our special commissioner 
in the series of reports, for, unless we 
are much mistaken, it will be readily 
conceded that they afford indisputable 
evidence that, while we import enormous 
quantities of apples annually, there are 
tens of thousands of acres of fruit trees 
that—in consequence of the ignorance of 
the most elementary details of their 
management—have been allowed to pass 
into a state that renders them practically 
worthless for the production of fruit for 
commercial purposes. As the result of 
the condition of the trees and unsuit, 
ability of many of the varieties largely 
grown, the annual loss to the owners of 
the orchards must be very heavy, pos¬ 
sibly not less than £100,000 in each of the 
six principal fruit-growing counties, which, as shown in the “Garden 
Oracle,” are Devonshire, Gloucester, Hereford, Kent, Somerset and 
Worcester, have an aggregate acreage of 137,085. 
J. A. Balmer, Pullman, Wash., cautions planters on the uplands not 
to purchase plum or prune trees which are budded on peach stock, 
claiming that the trees will be short lived. West of the Cascade moun¬ 
tains and in sections east where there are no severe frosts plum and 
prunes budded on peach roots are producing excellent results, he says. 
William Wickham, Binstead, England, has for eighteen years noted 
the measurement of trees girthed at four feet from the ground. A 
sycamore, which measured, as described, 7 feet ^ inch in 1878, this 
year measures 7 feet 111 inches; an oak which measured 10 feet in 1878 
now measures 11 feet It inches. A Spanish chestnut, pollarded, made 
a growth of 3 feet 3 inches in eighteen years. A large oak gained but 
9£ inches in twelve years, and an old larch but 41 inches in girth in six¬ 
teen years. A small oak gained 1 foot 1 inch in ten years. 
