HORTICULTURE 21 



most out of their farms owing to their lack of business training. The 

 fruit industry requires for its successful promotion men of ready re- 

 sources and accurate knowledge who can quickly comprehend and 

 adapt themselves to varying conditions. (U. S. E. S. B. 178.) 



Small-Fruit Culture. The growing of small fruits requires a 

 comparatively large investment of capital per acre and also a better 

 soil than is necessary for the production of most of the tree fruits. It 

 is therefore better suited to the small farm, under the direct super- 

 vision of the owner, than to the large estate, whose proprietor culti- 

 vates by proxy. To balance the comparatively large capital required 

 there is the fact that, aside from the value of the land and permanent 

 improvements, the chief outlay is for labor, which may be done by 

 the grower and his immediate family, while the returns are much 

 quicker than from the tree fruits or the grape. In a few sections, so 

 situated that large markets, either near or remote, are accessible, the 

 culture of one or another of the small fruits may be profitably under- 

 taken on a large scale, but these instances only serve to emphasize the 

 fact that small fruit culture is primarily a homestead pursuit. The 

 narrow bed or garden border of fifty years ago, enricned, dug and 

 weeded by hand, has developed into the field, fertilized, plowed, and 

 cultivated by horse power, yet the requirements of the various species 

 remain much the same, the methods of accomplishing the desired 

 results alone differing. As practiced by advanced growers in the 

 United States, the methods followed in the culture of small fruits are 

 peculiarly of American development ; while with the exception of the 

 currant, the varieties extensively grown are of American origin. 

 (Y. B. 1895.) 



MARKET CONDITIONS AND FRUIT SUPPLY. 



The fruit market, which has been greatly expanded in recent 

 years, has been very greatly modified and extended by improved 

 methods of transportation and storage. A man need not be very- old 

 to remember the time when, at least in the Northern States, bananas 

 were a comparative rarity outside the large cities, and oranges and 

 lemons, though common commodities, were rather high in price. In 

 the summer there was an abundance of the common garden fruits, 

 but in winter apples were practically the only sort which was at all 

 plentiful. A few years have witnessed a great change, and now there 

 is hardly a village so small that bananas and other southern fruits 

 can not be purchased at reasonable prices. In Europe the situation is 

 much the same. Such quantities of bananas are now taken to Eng- 

 land and sold at such reasonable rates that they are sometimes spoken 

 of there as the poor man's fruit. At the present time there are a num- 

 ber of fruits, such as avocados or "alligator pears," mangoes, and 

 sapodillas, which are fairly well known in the large markets though 

 seldom seen in the smaller towns. The enormous development of 

 the fruit-growing industry in California and Florida, which includes 

 the products of both temperate and warm regions, as well as the pos- 

 sibilities of supplying the northern markets with tropical fruits from 

 Porto Rico and Hawaii, makes it probable that within a few years 



