'■>'! Aiiuricdu JIorticiiKitral Socicti/. 



OUR FRUITS. 



BY JOHX 6. COLLINS, OK NEW JERSEY. 



When the invitation to write an article to be read at this meeting from 

 our worthy Secretary was received, the first impulse waa to decline, aa being 

 an object entirely out of my lino; further consideration, however, indurod a 

 few lines on the subject of Our Fruits. The small contribution of our fruits, 

 iu> shown hero iimv at New Orleans, a few of the later and loss perishable, 

 gathered from the diflerent States of our common country, form a collection 

 well worth a trip a long disUince to view. 



Althougli the subject of Our Fruits might be made to cover a broad field, 

 it is not my intention to extend, further than to give a few facts connected 

 with the practical part of fruit raising and marketing in the vicinity of Phil- 

 adelphia. Our first fruit to ripen, the strawberry, is perhaps as precarious 

 paying crop, taking into consideration the cost of growing, as almost any of 

 our fruit crops, varying in profits from nothing to five hundred dollars or 

 more per acre. The destruction of the plants through the season by the 

 white grub worm feeding on the roots, often detracts from the value of a 

 plantation to a great extent, considered by some of our strawberry growers 

 to be the greatest pest to the businos.>< that we have. As a partial prevent- 

 ive of the worm and a preparation for planting, I plow the ground the i)re- 

 vious autumn, and spread broadcast a ton of kainit per acre, also use stable 

 manure and ground bone. In former years our first strawberries to ripen 

 commanded high prices, but as they have become largely grown in the South, 

 as a matter of fact, our days for receiving high prices have passed ; but even 

 now our earliest varieties, at times, sell highest and pay best. We do not 

 use what are called gift packages for our berries; for long shipments ven- 

 tilated baskets are used, but for berries grown within carting distance, ten 

 to fifteen miles of Philadelphia, there are perhajis more stift', wooden, square 

 quart boxes used than any others. These boxes are packed into crates of 

 twenty-four to thirty-six quarts, sitting directly on each other, not requiring 

 any racks or divisions between them. With our last pickings of strawber- 

 ries we gather some of the earlier ras])borrios. which are marketed in pint 

 baskets or boxes, and, as with strawberries, the earlier fruit soiling at high- 

 est prices. The Phil:uloli)hia market, in 1SS4, was entirely too well supplied 

 with raspberries, and prices Avere too low for profit — would not have paid 

 for picking during a part of the season, had it not been for the fruit con- 

 servers who bought thousands of bushels at six cents per quart, and thou- 

 sands more at even lower rates. Before the raspberry season is near through 

 tlie earliest blackberries are in the market in immense quantities, and 

 although the i)reservers do not use them largely, they are much more gen- 

 erally consumed by the poojilo of the city, and during the past season brought 

 higher i)rices than raspberries. Our earlier varieties of blackberries, too, 

 were entirely through before we finished our Cuthbert raspberries. We pay 



