98 FRUIT FARMING 



THE MARKET CULTURE OF STRAWBERRIES. 



An extract from a Paper read before the Royal Horticultural 

 Society, 1889, corrected to date. 



My friend, the late Mr. Barren, has given you a full 

 and complete history, and named the best in all the 

 families of garden Strawberries. I have therefore only 

 to deal with their culture on a large scale for marketing, 

 or for the manufacture of jam. The Strawberry is a 

 very perishable fruit, and even in a few hours that 

 elapse before it is put upon the market, its freshness, 

 piquancy of taste, and bright appearance, have more 

 or less departed, in consequence of the packing and 

 jolting in transit. This is unavoidable ; and although 

 many growers send the fruit direct to market in their 

 own vans, still this liability to damage has the effect 

 of reducing the selection of kinds that will travel to a 

 few varieties, thus excluding some of the best in 

 flavour, from profitable market culture, as appearance 

 is a great factor from a paying point of view, I have 

 visited the Kent plantations in full bearing, and can 

 state from experience that fruit grown in the open is 

 far superior to any that is produced in closed-in 

 gardens, obviously because the sun from its earliest 

 morning awakening to the fading beams of its western 

 rays is full on the plants the whole day. These 

 conditions cannot be expected in walled gardens, or 

 in places surrounded by trees. A full play of air and 

 warm winds tends to ripen and flavour the fruit more 

 than is generally expected. To proceed, the largest 



