State Agricultural Society. 459 



HOW TO MAKE FRUIT GROWING PAY. 



BY A. S. GREENLAW. 



How to make fruit raising pay might be more easily demonstrated in 

 theory than by practice, as many have found to their cost. While 

 theory takes an outline of what has been in some particular instances 

 realized, and judging from what have been the requirements of the past 

 what may be the future increased demands, arriving at conclusions 

 highly satisfactory, jn*actice comes with spade and plowshare, pruning- 

 hook and saw; trees and vines are grown, fruits marketed, and perhaps 

 a very different result is obtained. -A common error is to cultivate 

 wholly a few varieties that may bring the highest price in the market at 

 the present time, neglecting equally good varieties that may be cheaper. 

 The probabilities are more than even that by the time the trees and 

 vines are in bearing condition the market will be overburdened, and 

 those kinds which have been neglected bring highly remunerative prices. 

 There is more money lost by trusting to a one-crop system of farming 

 than, perhaps, from any other cause. The grain grower discovers the 

 fact when his crop sells for six bits per hundred; or, if a man's depend- 

 ence is on the raising of hops, and they, contrary to their nature, fall 

 instead of rising to meet his expectations. 



To make fruit raising a profitable business requires a man to enter 

 the field from choice rather than necessity. Certain conditions too are 

 to be observed, such as favorable and convenient markets (there being 

 a greater profit in disposing of the fruit in a green state), a suitable soil, 

 and a wise selection of the best varieties that will give a continuous sup- 

 ply throughout the season — only giving preference to those particular 

 kinds that would ripen during the period of greatest demand. Hence I 

 would raise more Winter apples than Summer and Fall varieties; I 

 would raise more peaches that ripen in August and September than the 

 earlier kinds, as the former are of better quality and more sought after 

 for canning purposes. It is true, that if we are first in the field a very 

 profitable result may be obtained by raising some new and earlier fruits; 

 but the market is soon overstocked. You that have been long in the 

 business will remember with me how much haste was made a few years 

 ago in raising the early harvest and red Astrachan apples; also the 

 Madeleine pear, that then brought prices ranging from thirty to thirty- 

 five cents per pound. How soon the demand was more than supplied, 

 and we found it yery hard to dispose of all we raised. In eighteen hun- 

 dred and sixty and sixty-one, peaches were worth about one cent per 

 pound, and many were allowed to go to waste, as they would not pay 

 the expense of marketing; and so discouraged did the growers become 

 that they were slow to replant their orchards destroyed by the flood of 

 eighteen hundred and sixty-two, for which cause good peaches have, 

 since that time, been worth from three to ten cents per pound, while 

 the second quality have sold readily at from two to three cents. I have 



