The Canadian Horticulturist. 317 



MARKET GRAPE GROWING. 



O other fruit will in the future ever supplant the grape for 

 table dessert use. Grapes will be bought for their own 

 intrinsic merit and value, and not because people can 

 not get other fruits. The assertion made a year ago by 

 a St. Louis firm, namely, " That when nine-pound 

 baskets of Concords can be retailed for twenty-five cents 

 per basket the consumption will be practically unlimited," 

 seems to hold good. 



The freeze of October 12th, if it taught anything, clearly showed the firm 

 hold which our grapes have upon the popular taste and consumption. There 

 was no doubt as to the loss in fine quality from that freeze. It seemed wise to 

 at once stop heavy shipments of such damaged goods, and for a time there was 

 an almost entire cessation. When a few days later, some of our heavy growers 

 shipped off a few hundred baskets, just as an experiment, and the returns came 

 back, they were the most surprised men in the county to find those off quality 

 grapes bringing the highest prices of the season. The reason is easily stated. 

 For a time the demand far out-ran the supply, and, as a consequence, prices 

 went up. 



While as a rule up to October 12th, the quality of the fruit was good, and 

 the weather and roads almost perfect, everything favoring economic marketing, 

 and large consumption, as usual the shippers of first, early, sour grapes, the 

 growers and sellers of the wretched Champion, and unripe Concord and 

 Hartford, got in their damaging work, although perhaps to a less extent than in 

 some former years. This year the Worden more than sustained its former high 

 reputation. It is indeed a noble variety, and without controversy the best 

 black grape we have. 



While some improvement has been made, our whole system still remains 

 crude, ineffective and vastly expensive. What would the dairymen of Stockman, 

 Ellery, Sherman and other dairy towns say, if when butter was bringing 

 twenty-five cents in New York, it only brought fifteen cents in the home market, 

 and yet that is the precise grape situation. In the open market in towns less 

 than one hundred miles distant) hundreds of baskets were daily sold at twenty- 

 five cents and upward, while at home they were only bringing fifteen and some 

 days slow at that. 



Of course it will be said that fruits are more perishable, and less easily 

 handled than dairy products, and that we must expect a wider margin between 

 what the consumer pays, and the grower or producer receives. This is all true 

 where only a limited amount is being handled, but here is a product easily the 

 first agricultural industry of this great country. It is being shipped by the 

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