116 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In this connection no class of persons suffer more than the fruit grower. His 

 products are perishable and must mainly be sold on arrival. No trifling with 

 time and waiting for a more congenial season can be allowed. While we on 

 the lake shore, in some localities at least, have easy access both by land and 

 water to the great markets of the west, we are yet greatly lacking in system 

 and organized effort in the small economies of our business. In seasons of 

 great depression, like the past, the package, transportation, cartage, and 

 commission eat up so much of the proceeds that but little remains for the 

 grower. This fault, in some respects at least, lies at our own door. 



Our packages for small fruits, as a rule, are too small. Many of our grape- 

 growers the past season shipped the bulk of their grapes in eight-lb. baskets, 

 thus paying the transportation company, from our port, CO cents per one 

 hundred pounds for carry freight 55 miles, or more than one cent per mile. 

 While we were paying these rates for water transportation across the lake, 

 the grape-growers in western New York, along the Hudson river, and other 

 eastern points, were shipping their grapes to the same markets, in packages 

 costing considerable less than ours, and shipping in car lots, six or ten times 

 the distance, for about one-half the rates we paid. While our CoDcords (and 

 they never were better) were selling lor 3 and 3^ cents per pound gross, 

 through the season, those eastern growers claim their Concords netted them 

 3 cents per pound. By the use of these small packages, paying freight as we 

 do, by the package, it is a question whether we are not working for the inter- 

 est of others more than ourselves. The same objection applies to the ship- 

 ment of other fruit as well as to grapes. Peaches have been shipped from 

 Delaware to Chicago for years in half-bushel baskets, without netting or 

 other covering, at a cost of 35c per basket, the basket costing probably 8c,. 

 cartage Ic, making a total of 44 cents per half-bushel. From our port the 

 freight on a fifth-bushel is 5c — on 5 baskets, 25c; five baskets and netting, 

 25c; cartage, 5c making a total of 55c per bushel. Our berry-boxes, too, are 

 all "snide," and our apple-barrels are cut down to 2^ bushels. All these 

 things in connection with our loose, irregular, and often dishonest manner of 

 putting up fruit for market, have had a ruinous and depressing effect upon 

 the entire business. 



There is no profit in growing apples, gathering them, and hauling them 

 from two to ten miles to a cider mill and selling them for ten cents per 

 bushel. Better by far root out the varieties that have no market value or 

 home use and give to the remainder better care, more cultivation, and restore 

 back to the soil the elements of plant food which, by long practice of crop- 

 ping and depletion, it has lost. As a rule orchards have far roo many varieties. 

 For market purposes winter apples of good keeping qualities pay the best. 



The codlin moth has been the terror of the orchardist. Some years, in 

 many localities, it well-nigh destroys the commercial value of the crop. But 

 now it is safe to say we have a remedy, if properly applied, a cheap, expedi- 

 tious, and sure remedy. The spraying of our trees, say twice, once as soon 

 as the fruit is set and the trees out of bloom, and again two or three weeks 

 later, with a solutinn of one pound of Ix)ndon purple to 100 gallons of water, 

 applied in the form of fine spray, thrown over the tree instead of being 

 forced up among the branches, is a sure relief from this destroyer. In the 

 early season the blossom end of the fruit is up, and here is where the poison 

 must be applied. The poison should be prepared in the form of paste and then> 



