86 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



Floral Edition 



The strawberry crop last year of Geo. Johnson, Peterboro, Ont. Are you planning to grow one 



like it this year? 



short order. Every diseased peach tree 

 should be pulled up and burned the mo- 

 ment it is discovered; don't try to save 

 part of the tree which does not seem to 

 be affected, as disease after it once ap- 

 pears, will spread rapidly, and the en- 

 tire tree will usually be affected before 

 the fruit can be harvested. 



There ought to be a strict law, and a 

 rigid enforcement of -it, to protect the 

 fruit grower from his careless neighbor. 

 The man who will not properly look 

 after these things is a menace to his 

 neighborhood, and should be forced to 

 do so or be severely punished by the 

 state. 



Exporting Peaches. 



If this wretched European war ever 

 ends, and the people over there have 

 any money left with which to buy fruit, 

 I believe that the Elberta peach can be 

 exported with success, if picked at the 

 proper time, pre-cooled and quickly de- 

 livered to the sliip under proper refrig- 

 eration. The experiment has been tried 

 by western growers, with not very 

 satisfactory results, it is true, but the 

 eastern orchards have several days ad- 

 vantage, particularly those within five 

 hundred miles of the seaboard. The 

 experiment, I understand, has also been 

 tried by Canadian growers, under the 

 supervision of the Canadian Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, with much better 

 results. 



The principal obstacle in the way of 

 doing this successfully, is the absence 

 of railroad tracks on the New York 

 docks, which would permit cars to be 

 .switched direct to the side of the steam- 

 er, and a quick transfer of fruit to the 

 steamer's refrigerators, also a lack of 

 proper refrigerator space on most of 

 the ocean liners. 



Pre-cooling peaches for shipment to 

 any market is an essential to the great- 

 est success. The greatest losses 

 sustained by growers have been due to 



improper refrigeration, and absolutely 

 inexcusable transportation service 

 furnished by the railroad companies. 

 If cars are properly iced and cold, and 

 the fruit is cold when loaded, it will 

 carry three times as far, thereby widen- 

 ing the distribution, and arrive in first 

 class condition, usually with but one re- 

 icing. We have our own ice plant at 

 Morton, and ice our own cars, and try 

 to have the cars iced from 24 to 48 hours 

 before they are loaded, so that they 

 will be absolutely cold — around 40 de- 

 grees — usually about 36, so that the 

 peaches coming from the cold rooms 

 where they have been held at 34 to 36 

 degrees for two to four days, will not 

 undergo any decided change in 

 temperature, and will not "eat up" all 

 the ice in the bunkers before the car 

 can reach the first icing station. Last 

 season we shipped cars of peaches as 

 far as Tampa, Florida, under these 

 conditions, successfully. 



What The West Has Done. 



Most fruit growers are supposed to be 

 in the business for profit, but a lot of 

 them, like Rip Van Winkle, have been 

 asleep for twenty years, and many, I 

 fear, never will wake up. The whole 

 world has heard of the Hood River Val- 

 ley of Oregon, and the Wenatchee Val- 

 ley of Washington. These people have 

 been able to overcome a freight handi- 

 cap of $1.51 per barrel (figured as three 

 boxes) and a haul of three thousand 

 miles, and sell their apples here in our 

 midst, where the finest flavored apples 

 in the world are grown, for three and 

 four times what we receive for oui-s. 

 Co-operation is the thing that has done 

 it. Elimination of every needless ex- 

 pense, and a package that could be 

 absolutely guaranteed. 



It is much cheaper to operate one 

 large, efficient, convenient packing 

 plant in a community, than thirty or 

 fifty individual plants, and it is abso- 



lutely the only ,way by which a stand- 

 ard, uniform pack can be obtained. 

 There is no experiment about it ; it has 

 been thoroughly tried out and proven 

 im unqualified success. 



Selling Problem. 

 It is not a question any longer of how 

 to grow good fruit, or how to increase 

 the yield ; it is a question of HOW TO 

 SELL IT. The cost of production is in- 

 creasing all the time, and unless wc 

 adopt a better system, which guaran- 

 tees an honest, uniform pack, and keeps 

 the "cull" out of the package alto 

 gether, at the same time securing each 

 year better and wider distribution, 

 prices will go down until we reach a 

 point where any chance for a reason- 

 able return on our investment will 

 vanish. 



The selling of fruit is a specialized 

 industry, and should be handled by ex- 

 perts. We are really manufacturers — 

 manufacturers of the world's food sup- 

 ply — but unlike all other manufactur- 

 ers, we have been blundering along on 

 the principle of every man for himself, 

 and the Devil take the hindmost. 



Imagine any other manufacturer go- 

 ing ahead an entire year in total blind- 

 ness and ignorance of what his expenses 

 were or Avhat his product would bring ! 

 He does not do business that way — not 

 much. Before he will turn a wheel he 

 must know exactly what the cost of pro- 

 duction will be, and the exact price his 

 product will sell for. The tariff must 

 be properly adjusted for the manufac- 

 turer; there must be "gentlemen's 

 agreements," and secret trade combina- 

 tions; every contract must contain a 

 "strike clause" and a "war clause," 

 and in all cases ONE SET OF MEN 

 produce the article and ANOTHER SET 

 OF MEN sell it, while the farmer and 

 fruit grower generally insists on play- 

 ing the game from every angle, without 

 any regard whatever to his qualifica- 

 tions. 



The average man has some difficulty 

 in being an expert in more than one line 

 of endeavor. The man who plans his 

 crops; plants, tills, fertilizes, sprays, 

 prunes, thins, harvests and prepares 

 them for market, at the same time run- 

 ning the gauntlet of germs, parasite? 

 and adverse climatic conditions, has 

 done at least ONE MAN'S WORK, and 

 he ought to have sense enough to see 

 that the sale and distribution of his pro- 

 duct is ANOTHER MAN'S WORK, and 

 should be handled only by men who ar? 

 experts in that particular business. 

 Different Lines of Work. 

 The production and the sale an 1 

 distribution of the products of the farm 

 and orchard are two separate and 

 distinct propositions, and call for en 

 tirely different qualifications in the 

 men who do the work. A man may bo i 



