CRANBERRY GROWING. 



HENRY J. FRANKLIN, PH.D., SUPERINTENDENT CRANBERRY STATION OF 

 THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, WARE- 

 HAM, MASSACHUSETTS. 



The cultivation of the cranberry as a commercial enterprise 

 was begun on Cape Cod about fifty years ago. While the 

 cranberry plant is a native of northern Europe and Asia as 

 well as of North America, it has never been put under cultiva- 

 tion in the Old World. The conditions on Cape Cod appear to 

 be peculiarly adapted for the growing of this berry, and as the 

 business from the start was found to be profitable it developed 

 to such an extent that it is now^ considered the most important 

 industry on the Cape. It now brings in a total net return 

 annually of between $1,500,000 and S2,000,000 to those inter- 

 ested in the growing of this fruit in Massachusetts. It has also 

 been found that other sections of North America are suitable 

 for the commercial growing of the cranberry, and it is now 

 grown successfully in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Nova Scotia, 

 Michigan, and on the Pacific coast line of Oregon and Wash- 

 ington and on Long Island, these districts being named in the 

 order of their relative importance as cranberry-growing regions. 

 The Cape Cod region produces annually considerably over half 

 of the cranberries which are grown commercially, New Jersey 

 producing over three-fourths of all the berries grown in the 

 other sections. No very definite and accurate census of the 

 cranberry acreage appears to be available, but the government 

 census indicates that over 20,000 acres are under cranberry 

 cultivation in the United States. These figures, however, do not 

 really show how much land is devoted to the industry, for they 

 do not include the land that is used for a variety of purposes in 

 connection with most bogs, such as sand banks and other 

 necessary upland surrounding the bogs and the land used for 

 reservoirs. If all this incidental land were included with the 



