90 AGRICUIvTURE OF MAINE. 



a small city back yard. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries and 

 blackberries will stand a good deal of shade and that is a great 

 recommendation for them. It seems to me no one should be 

 without fresh fruit on his table when these fruits can be so 

 easily grown. I feel particularly sure that every one ought to 

 grow the strawberry, it being a fruit that we can have over 

 such a long season now, beginning with the middle of June 

 in most sections. By using a variety which is an ever-bearing 

 variety. Pan America, we began picking the middle of July 

 and the last berries we had just before the heavy frost about 

 a week ago. This shows that you can extend the season of these 

 small fruits almost as long as any of the small crops can be 

 grown. 



The strawberry, the most important of the group probably, 

 is adapted to more kinds of planting and to greater latitude and 

 longitude, than any fruit that is known today. It grows in 

 the highest altitudes and in the lowest valleys, and across the 

 continent from east to west, and in South America, Europe, 

 Asia, — it has been found in practically all parts of the world. 

 And so it can be generally cultivated, probably more than any 

 fruit that we know of, and should be grown more universally 

 than it is at present. I believe a question of markets generally 

 determines the growing of the strawberry, but so many of us 

 have neglected to develop our own local markets that that is 

 one of the reasons why we fail to grow them. We feel we 

 cannot ship them long distances and perhaps we ought not to 

 do so. Take a market like Boston, for instance. It is apt to 

 be filled with strawberries from all over the country, and nine 

 times out of ten the sections that are shipping to Boston are 

 not supplying their own markets. Grocers and provision mert 

 are going to Boston and buying strawberries and shipping them 

 back. No wonder they are not fit to eat. That is one of the 

 important things that we have got to look up, the market in 

 our locality, before we go into the raising of any of these 

 perishable fruits. If the market can be developed, do it, and 

 get a reputation in your own locality for growing good fruit, 

 and I think the development of it is just simply a question of 

 whether you keep up to the locality or not, because every local- 

 ity wants these fruits. It is a matter of whether they can get 

 them good or not. I find if we can send a limited number of 



