248 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Crown Bob is the best for cooking and canning purposes. They are 

 a thick-meated, solid berry. Industry is of finer grain, but I find them 

 more tender. I have had them die under the same treatment. 



I should give all gooseberries the same treatment. They will not take 

 care of themselves any more than will any other plant. I have known 

 persons to get plants from me and put them in the sod where they had 

 to cut the grass to find the gooseberries. That is not the way to raise 

 gooseberries. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Willard: I was much interested in the paper relating to black- 

 berries, for he showed conclusively that somebody could make lots of 

 money growing blackberries. I figured it up, and our friend Mr. Kellogg 

 is getting |500 per acre. Blackberries are a good crop. It 

 is dollars and cents we are after, and I think he is get- 

 ting more than his share. The gooseberry crop is one of the best 

 paying crops I ever raised in my life, and yet many are led to believe that 

 it is dififlcult to grow; but I think, from what we have learned, that the 

 use of a good Michigan spraying-pump will enable us to do it. I don't 

 believe I have ever made as much money from any one thing as from the 

 gooseberry. My experience may not correspond with others, but I have 

 found that they do best on a cool, low, heavy soil, and the only instances 

 where I have suffered severely from mildew has been on high, gravelly 

 land. Of course there are new gooseberries coming out, the Triumph, 

 Columbus, etc. Every one, however, that is large, has more or less 

 English blood in it, if I am any judge. Many of these English goose- 

 berries we don't like. The American people want to go forward with a 

 rush, and hence they are not always pleased with the English goose- 

 berries, because they are slow growers. Columbus is sent out by 

 Elwanger & Barry, and it will be a fruitful plant, and I don't know of any 

 of the tribe that make wood so readily and so well as Columbus. 



Q. How is Red Jacket? 



A. Pretty good, and Triumph is good. I think the best of the English 

 gooseberries is Whitesmith; they are all of the same breed, impregnated 

 more or less with English blood. It isn't a question of quality with us 

 so much as it is with the English people. In this country we want to 

 market and ship them, we want to pick them green and run them through 

 a fanning-mill, shovel them into peck baskets, and we don't think so 

 much about the quality. 



Q. How do you regard Houghton? 



A. Too small — we are always told that it is too small. 



Q. How about Downing? 



A. Downing is too thorny, but it is good. There is, however, a grow- 

 ing demand for the large English gooseberries, and sooner or later we 

 will have to supply them; hence the effort, all over the country, to give 

 us an American gooseberry the same size as the English. 



Q. Can they be grown for $1 per bushel? 



Mr. Morrill: They have not succeeded very well in this state, Mr. 

 Willard. 



Mr. Willard: I know, you have a warm, gravelly soil, and that is why 

 I threw out a word of caution. We had a piece of land which I thought 



