SMALL FRUITS. 225 



Insecticides are needed for vines and bushes; London purple or Paris 

 green for potatoes, and white hellebore for currant and gooseberry bushes 

 are good. I find white lime good for squashes and melons. 



If you are growing raspberries and blackberries where high winds pre- 

 vail, you will need some number 12 wire and stakes. If you are cul- 

 tivating vegetables it will pay to have plenty of baskets and boxes 

 on hand; for grapes nice ten-pound baskets; for strawberries and 

 blackberries quart boxes in sixteen or twenty-four quart cases; for rasp- 

 berries pint boxes in twenty-four pint cases. 



If you have a large quantity of produce of high quality to market, it 

 will pay to have a stencil plate and mark each package with your name 

 and address. According to friend Somerville, the most useful and neces- 

 sary horticultural appliance is the pig, which he uses both as a cultivator 

 and insect destroyer in his orchard. Friend Allen, of vegetable fame, 

 also finds him very useful as an aid in composting the large amount of 

 fertilizers he needs. 



In conclusion, kind friends, I wish to say that I don't know what was 

 expected of me when I was placed on this committee. I don't know much 

 about horticultural marketing and appliances as practiced and used by 

 our city friends, like Mendenhal, Nagel, Busch, and many others. 



I don't know why so many of our citizens prefer filthy tobacco and brain 

 destroying whiskey to nice fruit. I don't know why the industrious, 

 sturdy, country-grown boy is not as well qualified for any position of trust 

 as he whose residence happens to be in the city. 



SMALL FRUITS. 



REPORT ON SMALL FRUIT, 1890. 



BY DEWAIN COOK, WINDOM, COTTONWOOD COUNTY. 



Strawberries were a very light crop, as plants wintered very poorly even 

 where well mulched in the fall. Late frost took some, and continued 

 damp and hot weather at fruiting season caused some fruit to rot. We 

 only got three fair pickings. Varieties preferred, Crescent and Downer's 

 Prolific. 



The dwarf Juneberry seems entirely hardy ; yields immensely of bluish 

 black berries, about the size of tame black currents ; ripens with late 

 strawberries ; quality not quite equal to the blueberry. I did not miss 

 any taken by birds except a few of the latest. 



Currants a fair crop. Red Dutch mostly grown. They sold readily at 

 ten cents per quart, and were used mostly for canning with raspberries. 



Gooseberries a good crop, selling slowly at eight cents per quart. 



Of raspberries I am testing some twenty varieties. The crop the past 



season was from light to fair, the reds taking the lead for profit. The 



Turner takes the lead in hardiness and quality and is the popular variety 



for farmers ; but with me the Marlborough has superceded it for market* 



-14 



