HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON FRUIT 



Z^ psiHERE are some precepts so 

 important that they never grow 

 old or go out of date. They 

 are worthy of being impressed 

 on the minds of all men, and some men 

 evidently need more than one impress. 

 One of these venerable but patent 

 precepts, these ever old and ever young 

 truths, is the imperative and increasing 

 importance of intensive culture in fruit 

 growing. By intensive culture I mean 

 diligent and time culture and liberal 

 feeding with manures rich in the proper- 

 ties essential to perfect fruit. 



It has been demonstrated that inten- 

 sive culture in that it greatly increases ■ 

 the yield per acre, pays the general 

 farmer, the grower of wheat, corn, cotton, 

 tobacco, oats, etc. In fact that no 

 other system really does pay him in the 

 long run. How much more does this 

 apply to fruit growing, where not only 

 quantity is vastly more increased than 

 is possible with the above staples, but 

 where quality is also so vastly improved. 

 And in fruit, quality is almost or quite 

 everything. 



A man who by intensive culture 

 doubles his yield per acre of wheat or 

 corn, simply doubles his dollars per 

 acre. But the man who by intensive 

 culture doubles his yield of fruit is pretty 

 sure to so improve it in size, beauty and 

 general e.xccllence that its net value per 

 acre will be quadrupled or even sustain 

 a still greater increase. 



My experience in fruit growing 

 reaches back nearly twenty-five years. 

 It has been chiefly in the culture of 

 small fruit — strawberries, dewberries, 

 blackberries and raspberries, but has 

 embraced also grapes, peaches and 

 apples. As there is an exceeding diver- 

 sity of soils hereabouts, it has embraced 

 likewise nearly every conceivable soil, 



the stiffest of red clay, rocky knolls, 

 almost pure sand, black sandy loam 

 with pipe clay subsoil, and so on up and 

 down the gamut of soils good and soils 

 bad. 



This experience has impressed on 

 me the paramount importance of two 

 things, absolutely clean cultivation for 

 small fruits and grapes, the sowing and 

 turning under of pea vines or some green 

 crop in apple and peach orchards, and 

 the liberal application to all fertilizers 

 rich in potash. Ten or twelve per cent 

 potash, five per cent, phosphoric acid, 

 and two or three per cent, ammonia, I 

 find to pay best generally 



Kainit or muriate of potash for the 

 potash, acid phosphate or dissolved 

 bone for the phosphoric acid, and 

 nitrate of soda or cotton seed meal for 

 the ammonia, should be applied in a 

 larger or smaller quantity as actual ex- 

 periment dictates. But a liberal appli- 

 cation I have always found to pay best, 

 provided always that in small fruits the 

 weeds and grass are kept down. If a 

 man is not determined to give clean 

 culture, the less manure of any kind he 

 uses the better. And I may say, the 

 fewer plants he sets the better. While 

 none at all would be best of all. 



The largest yield of strawberries that 

 I have ever seen reported in the state — 

 over I i,ooo quarts an acre — I made by 

 clean culture and the liberal and re- 

 peated applications of above fertilizing 

 ingredients. 



Of course where large quantities of 

 fertilizers are used, it must all be 

 thoroughly mixed and applied broad- 

 cast. For small fruit, say one-third 

 thoroughly mixed with soil before plants 

 are set in spring, one-third as a top 

 dressing over plants, middles and all in 

 October, the remainder in same way 



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