360 ANNUAL EEPORT. 



ness for four years when the blackberries and raspberries will yield frona six to ten 

 quarts of fruit per hill. Your currants, gooseberries and grapes will come to bear- 

 ing the third year, and at the end of five years if you have not paid for all labor, 

 the land, and all expenses and 100 per cent, interest, beside saving from $25,00 to 

 $100.00 doctor bills each year, then I have missed my calling and don't know what I 

 am talking about. 



This I consider the best way to grow small fruit for profit, and it will encourage 

 the boy to let him have the proceeds after the family are supplied. If you want to 

 keep the boys at home, let them have an acre and see what they can do for them- 

 selves, you will find they will often beat the old man. 



Now, I presume many of you expected I would read a paper to tell these veteran 

 fruit growers how to grow small fruit and get rich — yoa that raise from 10© to 1000 

 bushels of small fruit every year. I can't do it ; but don't spread yourselves out too 

 thin, and tr}^ to cover too much ground ; don't run after all the novelties. Stick to 

 the old paying sorts, use all the manure you can and not swamp the plants ; deep 

 ploughing, heavy manuring laigely on the surface, early spring planting, clean cul- 

 tivation, matted rows, timely mulch, winter protection, good seasons, good pickers, 

 good markets, good prices, and you will be happy. 



Grape growing has been and may be profitable to the farmer. Cut back your 

 bearing vines to two eyes of the new wood, put them down and cover; tie them to 

 stakes or trellises in spring, and when the blossoms appear pinch off the shoot, one or 

 two leaves beyond the fruit. The Janesville and Oporto will pay to plant by a dead 

 ^ree or arbor, and never prune. Goto these when you want sour grapes and try 

 and be happy. 



Currants and gooseberries will pay if you give the worms for a change in diet, 

 "White Hellebore and Paris Green. 

 ; Again I say manure and mulch, and mulch with manure. 



I know not what the possibilities of strawberries are. I know of amateurs who 

 have produced five, five and one-half, and five and three-fourths bushels to the 

 square rod in a single season. If this can be done on one rod why not on one acre? 

 Why not grow 1000 bushels of strawberries, the queen of all fruits, on one acre in 

 one year? I know of one man who reported to me of growing five bushels fnpm 

 three plants and their increase, the following year. 



The following are cut from Green's Fruit grower since I left home : 



"265 quarts of strawberries were grown upon a bed between two and three rods 

 square, selling for $40.00. The owner in addition, sold $48. 00, worth of plants from 

 this plot. Between the rows of strawberries he had raspberries, picking eighty-five 

 quarts which sold for $27.75, but you must not plant ten acres expecting such a 

 yield." 



E. K. Frost of Chapin, Iowa, with whom I am acquainted, and can vouch for 

 the truth of statement, says : 



"I now have nearly all the new% highly prized varieties— twelve on trial, not 

 fruited much yet. I intend to select eight or ten varieties out of fifty now on hand 

 that suit me best, and drop all others. My soil is light, prairie, sandy loam— loose 

 subsoil of firm gray sand, yellow clay and magnesia, well underdrained with rock 

 ten to twenty feet below. No water ever stands on surface unless ground is frozen. 

 Season of 1884 I sold from seven-eightlis of an acre 150 bushels of strawberries, 



