1884.] THE farmer's small-fruit garden. 37 



or show you the best way to do everything in the small- fruit 

 garden, but simply open the way and give you such hints as will 

 help you to work out your own small-fruit salvation, for work it 

 out you surely must. 



Their importance as an article of diet is at last beginning to be 

 appreciated, and the sooner we all understand it the better, that 

 every dollar expended on the fruit-garden will save at least two 

 dollars in butchers' and doctors' bills. Three times a day the 

 whole year round, our tables could and should be siipplied with 

 these refreshing and health-giving fruits of our own growing. 

 How much better for the boys and girls at school to have a dish 

 of fresh berries, a cluster of grapes, or a cup of raspberry jam, 

 and good nutritious bread and butter for their dinner, than to 

 have the mother slave herself to death from day to day in prepar- 

 ing some health-destroying compound of grease and. spices in the 

 shape of loaf-cake, doughnuts, or mince pie, to tempt the appetite 

 and destroy the stomach, as well as a lot of good flour, eggs, and 

 butter, that might be used to give health and strength rather than 

 destroy it. I note with pleasure in my travels about, that fruit- 

 growers and such farmers as have plenty of fruit very seldom 

 have pastry of any kind upon their tables, its place being supplied 

 by fruit, either fresh or canned; and since the improved methods 

 of canning that have been adopted in the past four years, it is 

 possible to have fruit at any season of the year, approaching in 

 flavor that fresh from the vines — red raspberries retaining their 

 flavor the best of all. 



The taste for fresh fruit is growing fast, and while many of our 

 farmers know that they ought to supply it to their famiKes, they 

 still fight shy of planting, and say they can buy what berries they 

 want cheaper than they can grow them ; yet they will not buy one- 

 hundredth part of what their families would use if it could be had 

 for the picking. My own family is not a large one, yet we man- 

 age to dispose of from six to ten quarts of strawberries, raspber- 

 ries, currants, and blackberries, per day through June, July, and 

 August, and the next three months we worry along on peaches, 

 pears, and the product of 116 grape vines. Another excuse for 

 not planting is, that they have not suitable soil. Now, as a matter 

 of fact, any soil that will produce the ordinary farm crops can be 

 made to produce small fruits in perfection if liberally manured 

 and well cultivated — the more liberal the culture the better will be 



