SMALL FEUITS. 41 



All the well-known English small fruits, except the 

 gooseberry, do admirably in Ontario. The cultivation of 

 these fruits for market is now a very profitable business in 

 certain localities. In the vicinity of Oakville, on Lake 

 Ontario, there is a large breadth of land under straw- 

 berries ; an acre or so on every farm, and occasionally as 

 much as ten acres. Both climate and soil in the vicinity 

 of Lake Ontario seem admirably adapted to this fruit. 

 The facilities for marketing fruit or vegetables either by 

 land or by water carriage are unrivalled, and the demand 

 for both, but especially for strawberries, seems to be un- 

 limited in the Eastern States. The capital required for 

 small fruit farming is not large, and I know of no way in 

 which an industrious immigrant with some knowledge of 

 this species of agriculture could do better than by buying 

 a small farm in Ontario and devoting himself entirely to 

 fruit farming. He might, along with strawberry plants, 

 plant apple, pear, and currant trees, which would be 

 an ample provision for his old age. Or three or four 

 small capitalists might buy one of the large Ontario 

 wheat farms between them and divide it into small fruit 

 farms. 



Strawberries in Ontario are planted in rows about three 

 or four feet apart. The plants bear in the second year. 

 In the fall they are top-dressed with litter or stable 

 manure. After the fruit is picked in th esummer, horse- 

 hoes are worked up and down the drills, the soil well 

 loosened, and the weeds taken out. This is all the culti- 

 vation strawberries require. The plants bear abundantly 

 for two or three seasons, and should at the end ot that 

 period be ploughed down, when a crop of turnips can be 

 taken off the land without extra manure. The land can- 



