FRUIT GROWING FOR PROFIT. 



CHARLES W. MANX, METHUEN. 



I do not intend to tell you what to do, or how to do it, in 

 the business of growing fruit for profit as I do not wish to give 

 particular advice without personally seeing the locations and 

 conditions, as that savors too much of quackery, — prescribing 

 without seeing the patient, — but I will try to tell you what 

 I have been doing myself in fruit production. 



You may remember that I have been a grower of strawberries 

 to the amount of perhaps $40,000 and perhaps half that value 

 of tomatoes, but with the changing conditions of labor and 

 markets, the increasing weediness of the soil and other reasons 

 combining to make the business harder and less profitable, I 

 began in 1910 to set apple trees in the ground previously used 

 for strawberry and tomato growing, the most of which I had 

 reclaimed from rough, rocky pasture and sprout land with 

 some underdraining in the low parts. 



Baldwin trees were set 40 feet apart, with early varieties or 

 peaches and pears for fillers, leaving spaces of 20 feet when all 

 set, some in cultivated land and others in grass. I have con- 

 tinued planting until the past season, when I put out one 

 thousand apple trees in my large grass field, and now have 

 growing on the farm several thousand healthy, vigorous trees 

 rapidly coming into bearing. While I enjoyed picking the 

 luscious big berries in the years gone by, I have more pleasure 

 now in gathering the highly flavored, juicy fruit from the trees, 

 and it is easier on knees and back. 



In buying trees to plant an orchard, I should prefer well- 

 grown two-year-old stock from reliable nurseries, and can see 

 little to choose between northern and southern grown, though 

 it does seem reasonable to suppose that the former would be 

 more rugged and longer lived. It has been possible in some 



