March, 1916. 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



61 



can be done as far north as Ottawa 

 with our comparatively short summers, 

 similar work can be carried on through- 

 out the province of Ontario, and if the 

 growers would take this matter up, 

 even in a small experimental way, the 

 old adage, "Many hands make light 

 work," M'ould produce wonderful re- 

 sults within a few years. 



Owing to the quantity of field corn 

 grown for general horticultural pur- 

 poses, the areas selected for the grow- 

 ing of sweet corn seed should be distant 

 from field corn by about four to five 

 hundred yards, as corn intercrosses 

 very readily, owing to the fact that it 

 produces enormous quantities of light, 

 powdery pollen that is carried by the 

 wind. Sweet corn that has been pollen- 

 ated by field corn can be readily iso- 

 lated in the ear of grain, but such segre- 

 gation of seed greatly increases the cost 

 of production and tends to introduce 

 factors that will ultimately destroy the 

 pure type of the variety. 



Corn can be covered with light fac- 

 tory cotton, provided the screeiLs are 

 not placed too close around the plants, 

 affording a fairly free circulation of 



air; but if the grade of cotton be too 

 heavy or the enclosed corn too confined, 

 the pollen seems to lose its vitality, and 

 practically no seed is produced. At 

 Ottawa, seed has been successfully se- 

 cured in breeding cages made of a light 

 grade of cotton, but in a number of 

 instances no seed at all was secured 

 when the grade of the cotton was a 

 trifie too heavy. 



Another crop from which a consider- 

 able quantity of seed has already been 

 saved (but the amount might easily be 

 doubled or trebled) is that of the 

 tomato crop. Tomato seed is easily ex- 

 tracted from ripe mature fruits by pass- 

 ing the pulp through a quarter-incli 

 mesh screen, thereby removing the 

 coarse cores and skin and breaking up 

 the texture of the pulp containing the 

 seed. If the pulp is then stored in 

 glass bottles until slight fermentation 

 has set in, the seed can be cleanly 

 separated from this pulp by washing it 

 with a stream of water on a screen of 

 1-12-inch mesh. The size of this mesh 

 is that of the ordinary netting used on 

 fly screen doors, and is large enough to 

 hold the seed on the top of the screen. 



Problems of the Fruit Grower 



Seth J. T. Bush, Morton, N.Y. 



I HAVE been engaged in raising fruit 

 commercially ior thirty years, and 

 during that time have gathered 

 some information on the subject of 

 more or less value, but the older I grow 

 the more convinced I become of the 

 fact that a man "an learn something 



•Extract from an address delivered last 

 month at the annual convention of the Niagara 

 District Fruit Growers' Association. 



every day. Whatever success I may 

 have attained in fruit-growing has 

 been due largely to the fact that my 

 orchards are located along the south- 

 ern shore of Lake Ontario, where soil 

 and climatic conditions are well-nigh 

 perfect, and where the good old lake 

 tempers Uie wintry wind to the shorn 

 trees and stays the icy finger of Jack 

 Frost. 



For thirty years we have been fav- 

 ored and protected, and during all that 

 time we have had very few failures of 

 a crop, and usually have received good 

 prices for cur fruit, but the past sea- 

 son brought to many, particularly 

 peach growers, a rude awakening, and 

 removed large quantities of conceit 

 from some who had become convinced 

 from continued prosperity that their 

 success was wholly due to their indi- 

 vidual wisdom. 



There are many "problems" con- 

 fronting the fruit-grower, but we have 

 reached the point in our experience 

 now where the one great problem is 

 how to raise fruit at a profit. Hereto- 

 fore it has been a question of how 

 much profit, but the good old days are 

 past and gone, and we are face to face 

 with the problem of making any profit 

 at all. Very few, if any, peach grow- 

 ers in the United States made any 

 money last year, and hundreds of them 

 would have actually been ahead of the 

 game if they had not harvested a peach. 

 Millions of bushels of peaches rotted 

 on the trees in the United States last 

 season, and the situation will be the 

 same next fall providing there is a full 

 crop in all sections. Our own hope as 

 peach growers now lies in the activi- 

 ties of Jack Frost and disease. Three 

 years ago I told the peach growers of 

 New York just what would happen the 

 first time we had a full crop in all sec- 

 tions, and the past season saw the pro- 

 phesy fulfilled Avith a vengeance. 



The peach business has been over- 

 done. For the past ten or fifteen years 

 the nurserymen have been unable to 

 fill their orders for trees. It having 

 been discovered that the Elberta peach 

 would live and thrive to a greater or 



An exhibit of apples made b}- tlie Thedford iVuit Grower.s' Association last November at the Lambton County Horticultural Bzhlbition. 



