'pfe (anadian f[orticcIt(irist 



AUGUST, 1905 



Volume XXVIII 



Number 8 



WIDE AWAKE BRITISH COLUMBIA FRUIT GROWERS 



A. m'xIvILL, CHIEI' F"RUIT division, OTTAWA. 



THE Province of British Columbia is 

 progressing very rapidly in the mat- 

 ter of fruit growing. The climate (we 

 might say climates, for British Columbia 

 has several) has much to do with this ad- 

 vancement. The islands, coast and lower 

 mainland are particularly adapted to small 

 fruits, though excellent fruit trees are also 

 grown in large sections of this country. 

 The semi-arid inland valleys are particularly 

 adapted, under irrigation, to the cultivation 

 of apples, plums and cherries. With the 

 development of the various schemes for ir- 

 rigation it is not at all improbable that in 

 the near future British Columbia will supply 

 fruit enough to meet the demands of the 

 prairie provinces. 



Another most potent cause for the excel- 

 lence of the methods employed in British 

 Columbia is the fact that many of the fruit 

 growers have gone into this province quite 

 lately totally unacquainted with fruit grow- 

 ing, having, however, considerable capital. 

 These men are not loaded down with a 

 quarter of a century of prejudice, but come 

 to their work fresh and willing to imbibe 

 the latest and best from books and from 

 their most successful competitors in the 

 business. This will account for the fact 

 that on the average the methods of British 

 Columbia are infinitely ahead of those of the 

 average fruit grower in eastern Canada. 



In the Okanagan Valley irrigation is al- 

 most a necessitv. This determines, to some 



extent, the nature of the product, as well as 

 the methods employed in producing it. 

 Clean culture is almost uniform. Where 

 water has to be conveyed for many miles 

 in an artificial water bed, constructed at 

 great cost, it does not take long to convince 

 the fruit grower that he should not waste 

 it upon grass and weeds. 



EARI.Y FRUITING. 



The control which the orchardist has 

 over his trees contributes to the early fruit- 

 ing of nearly every variety of tree, and pro- 

 bably the dry atmosphere has much to do 

 with the perfect pollenation of fruit blos- 

 soms. The setting of the fruit is usually 

 what an eastern fruit grower would call 

 phenomenally heavy, and has led to another 

 orchard practice, almost unknown in east- 

 ern Canada, namely, thinning of the grow- 

 ing fruit, even on apple trees. It would 

 strike the average Ontario or Nova Scotian 

 grower as a waste of money to pay a man 

 $1.25 a day to pull good apples ofif a full 

 grown apple tree, but this is the common 

 practice in British Columbia, and one which 

 is a necessity. 



The one fruit tree that is not thinned is 

 the cherry. I took a branch of May Duke 

 cherries, a foot long, from the orchard of 

 Mr. Pridham, of Kelowna, and found that 

 there were 154 perfect cherries on it. Ap- 

 parentlv there were dozens of branches that 

 could have been selected from the same tree 

 quite as heavily loaded. 



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