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The Canadian Horticulturist. 



WHITE GRAPE CURRANT. 



Hv S. H. Mitchell, St. Mary's, Ont. 



IT often happens that fruit growers, 

 in their eager desire to obtain • 

 and test new and rare varieties of 

 fruits, plants, etc., overlook the real 

 merits of man}' of the older kinds. 

 I believe this is particularly true 

 with reference to the merits of the 

 White Grape Currant. It is a vari- 

 ety of slow and rather dwarf growth, 

 and being an enormous bearer it 

 requires, and must have, extra good 

 cultivation and heavy manuring, or 

 it will soon exhaust itself and become 

 useless. 



Some years ago I planted a num- 

 ber of long rows of different sorts of 

 currants and gooseberries to grow 

 fruit for our market, with a view of 

 testing what varieties would give the 

 largest net profits. The rows were 

 set six feet apart, and the bushes 

 were set about three and a half fee 

 apart in the rows. In currants, I 

 planted White Grape, Red Cherry, 

 and Black Naples. The result was 

 that, although the ground was good, 

 and I kept it clean and well culti- 

 vated, the White Grape bore such 

 enormous crops that I could not get 

 it to grow wood, and the bushes were 

 becoming stunted. I then gave the 

 land a dressing of unleached ashes, 

 about three quarts to each bush. I 

 spread it evenly over the ground 

 early in the Spring and cultivated it 

 in; and afterward as soon as the 

 fruit was set I spread the land all 

 over as evenly as possible, with 

 about three inches of rough manure. 

 No more is done to it except to pull 

 up some odd weeds that may force 



their way through until all the fruit 

 is gathered. 



Then the horse cultivator is run 

 through between the rows two or 

 three times, and "the ground under 

 the bushes cultivated and cleaned 

 with spading, fork and hoe. The 

 cultivating and hand cleaning is re- 

 peated in the Spring. The ashes 

 and heavy coat of manure are put on 

 ever}' Spring. The result has been 

 that the White Grape bore so heavy 

 and such beautiful fruit that the 

 profit from a row of the White Grape 

 was more than double that of the 

 Cherry Currant, and more than three 

 times that of the Black Naples. 



I then dug up all the Black Naples 

 and burned them (as I do not believe 

 in growing for market what does not 

 pay), and planted the ground wdth 

 Houghton Gooseberries. I kept the 

 Cherry Currant two years longer, 

 when the borer attacked them very 

 badly, and as the large wood died 

 and was primed out, a rank growth 

 of new wood sprang up. The large 

 soft pith in the new wood seemed to 

 just suit the borers, and they became 

 unprofitable. I then dug them up 

 and planted the ground with White 

 Grape Currant. 



For the past seven years, with the 

 above treatment, my White Grape 

 Currants have borne enormous crops, 

 and proved the most profitable small 

 fruit I have tried. I may add that 

 so far they have been troubled with 

 the borer very little. The reason 

 they are not hurt with the borer lies 

 in the fact that they make a slow 



