GENERAL DISCUSSION ON SMALL FRUITS. 



OPENED BY WILFRID WHEELER, CONCORD, MASS. 



Saturday, March 10, 1906. 



A meeting of the Society for the consideration of the subject of 

 the cuhure of small fruits in New England was held today. Wilfrid 

 Wheeler, Chairman of the Committee on Fruits, opened the dis- 

 cussion and spoke as follows : 



The subject of small fruits is a large one and to be treated suc- 

 cessfully it should be taken up in different branches by specialists. 

 Some general culture methods can be given, but these must be 

 modified to suit the individual needs of the various small fruits. 

 The care of the strawberry is quite different from that of the rasp- 

 berry, currant, etc. 



Under the head of small fruits are included the strawberry, rasp- 

 berry, blackberry, gooseberry, dewberry cranberry, currant, and a 

 few others which are hardly used enough to mention. Then there 

 are our native small fruits like the blueberry, huckleberry, and 

 thimbleberry. There have been some attempts to cultivate the 

 blueberry, especially in Maine, although the experiments have 

 not been entirely satisfactory, and we shall have to wait a few years 

 before we have our cultivated blueberry farm. But some idea of 

 the importance of the wild native crop can be obtained from the 

 statistics of the state of Wisconsin which markets 20,000 bushels 

 of blueberries, valued at $80,000. This is referred to because it is 

 believed that there are varieties of our native fruits which would 

 lend themselves to cultivation and prove not only profitable, as in 

 the case of the dewberry, but a great addition to many of our 

 gardens. 



The importance of our cultivated small fruits will be more appre- 

 ciated when one considers their wide range of cultivation and 

 adaptability. At present some member of the group is under 



