PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. Ill 



I have found the strawberry to be a profitable crop (not to use Chicago 

 as a market, as a rule), the fact being that South Haven is at least a week 

 later than towns in the interior of the state in the ripening the same 

 variety of fruit. By selecting best late- ripening sorts, keeping back with 

 mulching, I am able to put fine fruit in Kalamazoo just as the crop there 

 is finishing up, often realizing |2 per case for the bulk of the crop. 



The next in the order of ripening are the gooseberries, and of all the 

 fruit I grow these pay the best for the labor put into them. 1 have now 

 planted of this fruit about two acres. 



Some six years since, a prominent nurseryman was at my place and I 

 was showing him my plat of one' half acre and telling him what it was pay- 

 ing me. He remarked, " I would plant five acres at once;" but I felt some- 

 what as I have often heard the remark made thirty years ago in western 

 New York in regard to apples, that " In ten years you can not give away 

 apples," and some were then digging out their orchards, but have since 

 replanted and harvested very profitable crops. The apples could be 

 bought then for $1 per barrel. Last year and this the same apples 

 retailed for $5 per barrel. 



I have been shipping gooseberries to Chicago for twelve years, and $1.25 

 per case was the highest I could at first obtain. This season, from one 

 half acre, I picked 160 cases, and they sold for $1.60 to $2. 



But the gooseberry is a gross feeder, and to produce heavily must be 

 liberally manured. I used ashes and well-rotted manure, applied 

 separately. 



I have tried several sorts, but, so far as my experience goes, I would 

 rather have one acre of Downing than two of any other. 



I have grown the blackberry for twenty years and find it pays well, not 

 for the Chicago market, however, although I send hundreds of cases- 

 through Chicago to other markets in Illinois. 



I grow Snyder, Taylor, Kittatinny, Wilson, and Erie. I find Snyder 

 most profitable on sandy and Kittatinny on clay soils. I have observed 

 many make the mistake in not heading the Synder in closely enough, 

 allowing it to set more fruit than it can properly mature. It should be 

 headed back one half shorter than Kittatinny. 



I now come to the peach, which we all know pays fairly well in locali- 

 ties where reasonably sure of a crop. I have of this fruit about 2,500 

 trees in bearing, but here again one needs to live about two lives, the first 

 to learn how and what to plant. 



I have planted quite a good many Crawfords and Wheatland in the past 

 twelve years, not one of which has ever paid for the ground on which it 

 stood. I doubt, if my forty acres were all planted to Wheatland, I would 

 have five bushels, in the best peach year. Now, I am not speaking dispar- 

 agingly of these sorts where they produce well, for there are no better 

 selling peaches; but my experience with the Crawfords, when they do 

 produce, is that if we bring in five bushels we might get two No. 1 and 

 two No. 2, and the other bushel only fit for Chicago. You say that is a 

 little hard on Chicago, but it is right, just the same. 



I want to diverge just a little here, and give some of my experience in 

 shipping peaches to Chicago. Several times I have tried this: I would 

 put up, say, fifty baskets of No. 1 peaches, every peach select, and put my 

 card in, guaranteeing it such. Then I would put up fifty baskets of culls, 

 ship at same time — not a cent's difference in the returns. 



