The great interest in the cultivation of fruit which has been excited
within a few years, has given rise to many nurseries to supply the
demand, and every year we see the number increasing. Or rather, we see
new adventurers in this line, for the failure of many and the
abandonment of the business, prevents the number from becoming so
great as one would suppose.
We are very glad to see the art of fruit culture increasing, and we
are very glad to see competent men embarking in the nursery business.
But we are sorry to see the impression gaining ground that it is a
business which anybody can conduct, and that every man can make money
by it who knows how to graft or to bud. Let no man embark in it under
such misapprehension.
In the first place, the time, and labor, and patience required for a
successful nursery business is much greater than any one suspects
beforehand. If a man has a large capital he may begin sales at once
upon a purchased stock. But if one is to prepare his own stock for
market, and this must be the case with by far the greater number of
western nurserymen, it will require several years of expensive labor
before he can realize anything. Nor even then will he be apt to
receive profits which will at all meet his expectations. During these
years of preparation on what is he to live? If he has means, very
well; but let no man suppose that he can get along, especially with a
family on his hands, during the early years of his nursery, if he has
nothing else to depend upon. The mere physical labor of keeping a
nursery in proper order is such as to make it no sinecure.
But all this is a less consideration than the special skill and
vigilant care required to conduct a nursery in an honorable manner.
Nowhere do mistakes occur more easily, and nowhere are they more
provoking, both to the buyer and seller. It is rare that assistants
can be had upon whom reliance can be placed. There are men enough to
plow, and grub, and clean; but to select buds and grafts, to work the
various kinds, and plant them safely by themselves, this, usually,
must be done by the proprietor. Where a nursery is carried on by
assistants, it makes almost no difference how much care is used,
mistakes will abound.
The extent to which an error goes is not unworthy of a moment’s
attention. We purchased of a very highly respectable nurseryman, the
_Royal George_ peach. The first season many buds were distributed from
it. An expert nurseryman in the vicinity, among others, got of it. The
credit of the original proprietor of the tree was such that it was
thought safe to propagate at once, and thousands of trees were worked
with these buds; from him, nurserymen from neighboring counties
procured scions, and now the Royal George, which has proved to be no
Royal George at all, is scattered all over the country. When a nursery
contains from fifty to a hundred kinds of apples, thirty or forty
kinds of pears, ten to twenty sorts of cherries, thirty or forty kinds
of peaches, besides plums, nectarines, apricots, etc., there will be
some two or three hundred _separate varieties_ of fruit to be
propagated each year, and of each sort from a hundred to a thousand or
more trees, according to the business of the nursery. Two things are
apparent from this view; first, that such unremitting and sagacious
vigilance is required that not every one is fit to be a nurseryman;
and, secondly, that not every nurseryman is a scamp who puts upon you
trees untrue to their names. No doubt there are roguish nurserymen; no
doubt, too, there are culpably careless men in this, as in all other
forms of business. But no one will be so charitable to nurserymen as
those who understand the difficulties of their business; and a
mistake, and many of them, may occur in well-appointed grounds, which
no care could well have prevented.
We think this to be a business to which no man should turn, except
under two conditions; first, that he will, if he has not already,
serve a faithful apprenticeship to it—we do not mean by regular
indenture, but by practising for several years in a good nursery until
the prominent essential parts of the business have become practically
familiar.
The other condition is, that he make up his mind to _see to it
himself_.
* * * * *
REMEDY FOR YELLOW BUGS.—A gentleman informs us that he has always
saved his vines by planting _poppies_ among them. Those on one side of
an alley, without poppies, would be entirely eaten, while those on the
other side, with poppies, would not be touched.