University Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1908-1916, 1913-04-18
A BANKER AND HIS GARDEN
R. B. Price Applies to His Acre Plot the Same
Sagacity That Made Business Success
He Gets Results

Gardening is banking. Nature Is
the banker, the soil is the bank, and
the man who plants the seed is the
depositor Isn't it logical then to con-
clude that banker should be a good
gardener? But what do We care
about proof by logic when we know
that the pioneer banker of Columbia
applies his banking enthusiasm, sa-
gacity and diligence to his work with
the soil and grows the earliest pota-
ties, the finest cabbages and the juciest
tomatoes TO be found in town?
The experience of r. b. Price in the
realm of interest-paying and interest
receiving has built up his implicit
faith in the bank of Nature. Or is
it the other way around, for he is as
successful i'm business as he is gar
dening and he has been at both for
more than sixty years? But this story
concerns Mr.. Prices garden, and that
is a good deal-a whole acre of soil
soon to be full of seeds, tubers and
every other kind of botanical organism
that will grow something good for
the dinner table.
Mr.. Price has great confidence in
this banker-Nature. Whenever you
see customer and the president of
the bank with their heads together
about a day, you may know that some
kind of transaction is going to be
made. Yes, Mr.. Prices confidence in
Nature is so firmly implanted that he
has seen fit at times to make daring
in fact to speculate.
Now for an example
A Speculation i'm Potatoes.
Would you plant potatoes in the
middle of February and expect them
to grow? Well, Nature, if you re-
beamed nice, sunshiny smiles
for several days about the time of
Lincoln's birthday and those smiles
with warm pats on the shoulder were
-oo much for Mr.. Price to resist He
put in the pOtatoes-and he put them |
iway down. too; then heaped the dirt
n a ridge over them, and covered
hat with fertilizer. Some of these DAYS
'oon those potatoes are going to be
'eeping up through the soil, and if
he frost doesn't scorch them clear
lown, Mr.. and Mrs. Price are going to
lave the first potatoes this spring.
30 you see Mr. Price after all may re-
llize compound interest on this invest
nent. 1t is not so bad to speculate
When you know how. The Prices al
Ways have early potatoes.
It's a little early yet to buy garden
roduce. but it's just the time of the
ear that a person natures an i'm
lense appetite for French breakfast
homegrown tomatoes ana
sparagus soup. These all grow in
Ir. Prices garden-not the soup. of ,
curse. but the asparagus does And
esides there will be early June peas ,
erhaps ready in May, string beans ,
nat aren't stringy; peas, cabbage,
weet corn, carrots, parsnips-fine
'r vegetable soup; sweet peppers, ,
alsify, cucumbers, kale-all the COM
ION vegetables that have been known
nce Cain had truck patch; and
rowing beside them, okra, egg plant,
antaloupe and casaba, more recent
rivals in the vegetable kingdom.
he last is Mr.. Burbank's latest ex- :
eriment in vegetable genetics. There ;,
re watermelons, too, in Mr.. Prices
arden. But perhaps we had better
ot mention them. You know the n
mptation. II
Pleasure for Both of Them. Q
visitor callad at tho homo tho otI, =,