2166 NORTH AMERICAN STATES 



NORTH AMERICAN STATES 



varieties mostly grown for commercial and wine-making 

 purposes, while almost the entire list of standard 

 varieties can be and are grown in family vineyards. 



Pears thrive and fruit well except on the lighter 

 lands, and nearly every home-garden has from one to 

 half a dozen trees. There are a few small commercial 

 orchards in district No. 1, Bartlett and Clapp being 

 most largely grown. At Hartford and the adjoining 

 towns on the west side of the Connecticut River, the 

 Bosc is produced in its highest perfection. 



Cherries have been steadily failing in the state for 

 twenty-five years. Not enough are grown for home 

 supply. Newly planted trees soon die out, and there is 

 a general discouragement. They seem to do best in 

 the vicinity of Middletown and Meriden, and the 

 few commercial plantings there are quite profitable. 



Quinces are grown all over the state for home supply, 

 but thrive best along the Sound shore, where there are 

 a large number of small commercial orchards. 



Strawberries are very largely grown, both for home 

 and outside markets, mostly in medium matted rows, 

 with an average yield of eighty to ninety bushels an 

 acre. Some cultivators, who follow the hill system or 

 grow in narrow, thinly matted rows, secure 150 or 

 more bushels an acre. In recent years some of the heavy 

 wet hilltop lands in Hartford and Tolland counties 

 have been cleared of stones and are producing late in 

 the season heavy crops of extra-fine strawberries that 

 in 1914 supplied the Hartford market with the very 

 best of the whole year and it is reported that the returns 

 to the growers were from $600 to $800 an acre. 



A number of the berry farmers have systems of 

 irrigation which add greatly to the surety of the crop, 

 besides increasing the size and appearance of the fruit. 

 The rolling character of the country and vast number of 

 small streams abundantly supplied with water make it 

 possible, at moderate expense, to irrigate many thou- 

 sands of acres in this state, and the time is not far dis- 

 tant when the streams of Connecticut will be more 

 valuable to her horticulturists than they ever were to 

 her manufacturers in the old days of many small 

 factories and water-wheels. 



Almost from the earliest settlement, small local 

 nurseries have abounded in the state and today 

 number forty-one, with three quite extensive ones in 

 Hartford, New Haven and Fairfield counties. At 

 Cromwell, Middlesex County, is a floricultural estab- 

 lishment which, with one exception, has the largest 

 area under glass of any such establishment in America, 

 some thirty acres, and surpasses all others in the 

 annual production of superb roses. 



The late Judge A. J. Coe, of Meriden, was one of the 

 first men in America to take up the new chestnut cul- 

 ture by the importation of the best foreign varieties 

 and the selection of the best natives and their crosses. 

 He began the grafting on native sprouts and seed- 

 lings, and fifteen to twenty years ago stimulated a 

 general chestnut grafting, so that a number of chestnut 

 orchards were being established on land too rough for 

 cultivation, yet strong in its ability to grow the chest- 

 nut tree and nuts to perfection; but the chestnut blight 

 of recent years is playing such havoc with all chestnut 

 trees that for the present no further developments can 

 be expected. 



At Wethersfield, in Hartford County, Orange and 

 Milford, in New Haven County, and Southport, in 

 Fairfield County, are many farms devoted to seed- 

 growing. Onion seed and sweet corn are the great 

 specialities, but a great variety of other seeds are also 

 grown, especially at Wethersfield and Orange. 



Market-gardening is conducted extensively by special- 

 ists near all large towns and cities, while, with so many 

 markets always close at hand, vegetables and fruits are 

 sold in moderate quantities from nearly every farm. 

 The largest market-garden farm is at New Haven, 

 where over 400 acres are under annual cultivation with 



vegetables and small-fruits. Twenty years ago at 

 Southport, Fairfield and Westport, there were many 

 farms, both large and small, devoted entirely to the 

 production of onions. "Southport onions" were famous 

 for fine appearance and quality, and nowhere in America 

 was the annual yield so great or price received so high 

 as in this district. Marketing was done in sailing vessels, 

 direct from the farms to the dock markets in New York, 

 where the onions were sold direct to retail dealers, boat 

 captains acting as salesmen without commission for 

 the sake of carrying the freight. For many years the 

 net returns an acre were the greatest of any in the 

 state. Being along the Sound shore and only fifty miles 

 from New York, these valuable farm lands have in 

 recent years been bought up for summer residents' 

 property at $2,000 to $8,000 an acre, causing an entire 

 abandonment of the once-prosperous onion business. 



Trolley freight lines are widely extended through 

 many farming sections of the state, and, running express 

 cars at certain hours of the day with freight movements 

 at night, they are growing to be a factor in the distribu- 

 tion of horticultural products. 



Of the persons not now living who have had marked 

 influence on the development of Connecticut horti- 

 culture may be mentioned: Theodore S. Gold, of West 

 Cornwall; P. M. Augur, of Middlefield; Edwin Hoyt, of 

 New Canaan; Richard Van Densen, of Enfield; A. J. 

 Coe, of Meriden; Dr. Gurdon Russell, of Hartford; 

 Albert Day, of Brooklyn; J. M. Hubbard, of Middle- 

 town; A. C. Sternburg, of West Hartford; John B. 

 Smith, of New Britain; James B. Olcott, of Manchester; 

 Miss Emily Moseley, of Glastonbury; and Mrs. John 

 P. Bacon, of Danbury. Gold, Augur, Hoyt, Coe and 

 Van Deusen were fountain-heads of horticultural 

 knowledge in regard to varieties of fruits and their 

 adaptability to different sections at the time of the com- 

 mercial awakening in the seventies and early eighties 

 of the last century; while Miss Moseley might be said 

 to have been the mother of the great commercial horti- 

 cultural industries that center about Glastonbury, in 

 Hartford County, and reaching out into Tolland and 

 Middlesex counties, while the influence of Augur, Coe 

 and Hubbard are clearly shown in the large orchard 

 interests now centered about Middlefield and Walling- 

 ford. Gold and Hoyt had a wider influence the whole 

 state over, and their works live after them in nearly 

 every rural home at the present time. 



Public-service agencies for horticulture. 



The State Agricultural College at Storrs, in Tolland 

 County, and the Connecticut Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station at New Haven, are the only two public- 

 service agencies doing any work along horticultural 

 lines. While the Experiment Station at New Haven 

 has no horticulturist under that name, it has a botanist 

 who devotes his time to a study of the diseases of all 

 farm crops and the means of combating them, and 

 can also give advice regarding the pruning, grafting 

 and general care of orchards. An entomologist does 

 the same work for insect pests that the botanist does 

 for fungous diseases. The Station inspects yearly all 

 nurseries in the state. There is a specialist on market- 

 gardening and a plant-breeder. There have recently 

 been issued three or four horticultural bulletins, a spray 

 calendar and a short bulletin of specific directions for 

 treatment of orchards, and two or more within the year 

 on insect pests. 



There is a school of horticulture at Hartford, and 

 horticulture is taught in connection with agriculture in 

 many of the high-schools. 



The Connecticut Pomological Society, organized 

 some thirty years ago, is a prominent feature in the 

 lively fruit interests of the state, and at the present 

 time has a paying membership of nearly a thousand 

 members, making it the largest society in proportion to 

 population of any state in the Union. 



