PREFACE 



IN writing this book my aim has been to enhance the home production 

 of fine fruit and thereby foster better living. As the text clearly 

 shows, I have herein consistently ruled against commercial standards 

 and practices, whenever these fall below the high order of merit and 

 quality set by the amateur. The commercial grower produces fruit 

 for a livelihood, to supply the demands of people who do not grow 

 it; the amateur grows it for the joy of achievement, for the realization 

 of a high ideal. In the one case the fruit is the means to an end; 

 in the other, it is the end itself. Both men are needed in our national 

 economy, but of the two, as shown in chapter 13, the amateur from the 

 beginning has played, and should continue to play, the title role be- 

 cause he, rather than the commercial grower, sets the standard of 

 excellence. 



Such being the case, effort has been made to depict the pleasure 

 of growing and eating fine fruits and, by means of photo-engravings, 

 to portray the restful and the refining influences of home fruit growing. 

 These pictures which present glimpses of home plantations, such as 

 those in which my boyhood and young manhood were spent, reveal 

 happy blendings of beauty and utility and should, therefore, prove 

 suggestive and helpful to the dweller on the city and suburban lot, 

 the owner of a "country place," and the farmer who aims to give an air 

 of refinement and hominess to his residence, without belittling utility 

 and economy. 



As beginners are often bewildered by descriptions of varieties in 

 nurserymen's catalogs, as they may know little as to the kind of 

 nursery stock to order, and are frequently at sea as to how to make a 

 selection, especially if they read literature based upon commercial 

 standards, I have rather fully discussed the main points to consider 

 in choosing varieties and buying plants for the home plantation. The 

 primary aim should be for high quality, for as Downing points out, 

 "He who owns a rood of proper land in this country, and, in the face 

 of all the pomonal riches of the day, raises only Crabs and Choke- 

 Pears, deserves to lose the respect of all sensible men." 



The great majority of the Northern tree fruits discussed herein, 

 I have learned to know well in Canada, (my boyhood home), Ohio, 



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