NOTES ON THE GRIMSBY FRUIT DISTRICT. 



^1 f^O the enthusiast in horticul- 

 ture the Niagara district offers 

 an endless variety and an 

 almost inexhaustible field of interest. 

 Especially is this true when the enthu- 

 siast is less favored than the fortunate 

 dwellers of our sunny vineyards and 

 happens to be a dweller in the north. 

 To one of the latter who drops in upon 

 you perhaps only once a year, or less, 

 the progress you are making in your 

 methods of cultivation, and general ad- 

 vancement as a fruit district, are much 

 more noticeable than to one of your- 

 selves who are engaged in the opera- 

 tion. I, for example, can see great 

 changes for the better every successive 

 visit I make to your district. If com- 

 petition be the life of trade in commer- 

 cial lines, so must competition and the 

 spirit of rivalry tend to greater perfec- 

 tion in the operation of fruit culture. 

 Only a few years ago there were con- 

 spicuously but a few model fruit farms 

 and farmers between Hamilton and St. 

 Catharines. Now there are many, and 

 their number is increasing every year. 

 There are yet a number of laggards to 

 be seen, but the discriminating compe- 

 tition in the fruit markets must in time 

 drive them, if the spirit of rivalry does 

 not shame them into better and more 

 progressive methods. 



Last December while making a visit 

 to my old friend Mr. M. Pettit and his 

 family and marking the great improve- 

 ment which he had made in his 

 fine fruit farm in the course of three or 

 four years, I visited especially the home 

 of Mr. W. M Orr to note his methods 

 of fall cultivation in the several depart- 

 ments of his farm. A few weeks ago I 

 made a second visit to observe, as far 

 as they would show, the result. Mr. 

 Orr is among the most systematic and 



thorough fruit farmers on the Grimsby 

 road, but to a novice it is not easy to 

 see how a beginner could adopt his 

 methods and follow them until returns 

 began to come in without considerable 

 capital to start with. Mr. Orr does not 

 demand two crops from his land at the 

 same time, nor does he believe in tak 

 ing anything from the land during the 

 years in which the orchard is in its pre- 

 paratory stage, whether it be in peaches, 

 pears, plums or apples ; but on the 

 contrary he believes in cultivating and 

 feeding the soil from the time the trees 

 are planted without taking any crop 

 from it till the trees are in bearing. 

 This belief he puts into practice, for we 

 noticed on his farm orchard plots of 

 both plum and pear trees two years, 

 three years and so on up to thirteen 

 years, all treated after the same fashion. 

 Last fall Mr. Orr had nearly all his 

 plots covered with a growth of rape. 

 This served to arrest the leaves as they 

 fell from the trees and they helped to 

 thicken the covering. This covering 

 Mr. Orr claimed protected the roots of 

 the trees during the winter, besides act- 

 ing as a mulch for the soil, and was 

 ploughed under early in the spring. 

 This ploughing was followed by a sow- 

 ing of crimson clover, or some other 

 green crop to be turned under early in 

 the fall and treated as before. Mr. Orr 

 is firm in his belief that the trees, in the 

 increased quantity and superior quality 

 of their fruit, pay for all this preparation 

 after they come into bearing, and in a 

 very few years more than make up the 

 value of any root or other crop that 

 might have been taken off the land. I 

 stated in the Horticulturist two years 

 ago that the finest samples of plums 

 that came into the northern market 

 came from the farm of Mr. Orr, and 



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