January 29, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



49 



from baking. No harm results from the direct application of 

 cold water as pumped from the ground, as he uses no reser- 

 voir and applies the water directly as pumped. 



The Western New York Horticultural Society. — I. 



FOR fifty years fruit-growing has been one of the lead- 

 ing industries of western New York, and the annual 

 sessions of the Horticultural Society at Rochester are 

 largely devoted to orchards, vineyards and small fruits. 

 The long experience of the members of this society and 

 the efficiency of its officers make its gatherings the most 

 important convention of fruit growers held in this country. 

 The meeting of last week was no exception to the general 

 rule. More than five hundred members were registered 

 as present ; the exhibition of fruits and of implements 

 designed to facilitate fruit-culture was large and varied, 

 and the addresses, as usual, had a genuine practical value. 

 The large hall was filled at every session, and well-known 

 horticulturists were present from Michigan, Ohio, Con- 

 necticut, Maine, Virginia, Canada and the Hudson River 

 Valley. Mr. W. C. Barry was elected president for the 

 next year ; Wing R. Smith, of Syracuse, vice-president ; 

 S. D. Willard, of Geneva, second vice-president, and John 

 Hall, of Rochester, secretary and treasurer. 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



President Barry, in speaking of the increased usefulness of 

 this society, took occasion to commend the professors of agri- 

 culture and horticulture in Cornell University and in the 

 experiment stations, who have helped materially not only by 

 their presence, but by carefully prepared papers, to make the 

 sessions of the society profitable. He also acknowledged the 

 debt which the fruit growers of the present owe to the pio- 

 neers who founded this society and who had sufficient enter- 

 prise to collect different fruit plants from abroad, and by 

 testing different varieties and experimenting in methods of 

 culture had left an invaluable body of experience. The dry 

 weather of the past year, which injured all crops, and espe- 

 cially small fruits, has impressed growers more than ever 

 with the necessity of providing for a permanent water-supply, 

 and it is generally felt that every care must be taken to save 

 the rainfall. Underdraining, deep plowing, hillside reser- 

 voirs, wind-power, should all be tried, and every other 

 method of securing that moisture which is absolutely essen- 

 tial to the production of crops. In reference to the marketing 

 ot fruit, Mr. Barry considered it a mistake to sell and ship it at 

 the time of gathering. In many cases this is unavoidable, 

 because growers have no place to store their fruits and there- 

 fore dispose of them hastily and often unprofitably. Ordinary 

 farm buildings cannot be successfully used. It is advisable 

 on every fruit farm to have a structure, even if a temporary 

 one, which is suited for storing fruits. If these can be held 

 back tor a month, or even a fortnight, until the rush to market 

 is over, good prices can usually be realized, and very often the 

 increase in price thus secured will, in one season, nearly or 

 quite pay for the building. This building maybe of moderate 

 size at first, and can be enlarged as necessity requires. Well- 

 equipped houses for retarding the ripening of fruits and for 

 cold storage are expensive, both to build and to maintain, but 

 in any section where fruit-growing is carried on largely a com- 

 pany can be formed and a building constructed for common 

 use, but for ordinary cold storage for single farms one can be 

 built at small cost, and when once used it will be considered 

 indispensable. 



In regard to the fertilization of orchards, Dr. Van Slyke was 

 quoted to the effect that farm-yard manures need to be supple- 

 mented with fertilizers containing phosphoric acid and potash 

 to make a proper food for orchards. With every ton of 

 stable manure it is well to mix from fifty to one hundred 

 pounds of acid phosphate and from twenty to fifty pounds of 

 crude muriate or sulphate of potash. Unleached wood-ashes, 

 ground bone and potash salts are better than stable manure. 

 A peck or half a bushel of ashes to a bearing tree, with three 

 or four pounds of ground bone, is what is needed. Two 

 pounds of potash salts can be substituted for the ashes. When 

 unleached ashes of known purity can be bought at home they 

 are worth buying if they do not cost too much. But all the pot- 

 ash and phosphoric acid they contain can be had much cheaper 

 than by paying $10.00 a ton for ashes. Muriate of potash and 

 bone meal cost two and a half cents a pound, and 150 pounds 

 of it will furnish as much phosphoric acid as a ton of ashes, 



and both together will not cost half as much as ashes ordi- 

 narily do. Mineral manures can be handled quickly and 

 at little expense. In short, few people realize how much it 

 costs to distribute such a bulky fertilizer as barn-yard manure. 

 Orchards which have outlived their usefulness should be cut 

 up into firewood and not allowed to occupy valuable ground 

 and breed destructive fungi and insects. In their place new 

 orchards should be planted on ground perfectly prepared and 

 well planted with a proper selection of trees. We have 

 now remedies and preventives which enable us to keep in 

 check insects or diseases which threatened the destruction of 

 orchards and vineyards a few years ago. Spraying has be- 

 come almost as common as cultivation, and we sliould test 

 every new help, even to the importation of natural parasites, 

 to help us in our war against insects. 



Among the members of the society who have died during 

 the year, and to whom Mr. Barry paid special tribute, were the 

 venerable John J. Thomas, first president of the society, who 

 died in his eighty-fifth year— a modest, capable man and a 

 trusted authority, eminent in the practice and in the literature 

 of the art of horticulture ; Charles E. Cook, one of the largest 

 fruit growers in the region of western New York and the in- 

 ventor of a fruit-gatherer which is widely used ; the brothers 

 Moulsen, old nurserymen, of Rochester, both of whom had 

 passed their fourscore years ; the brothers Thomas and Edwin 

 Smith, of Geneva, who for forty years have been eminent as 

 nurserymen and fruit farmers, and Ethel C. Sherman, who had 

 been for many years secretary of the Horticultural Society of 

 Wyoming County. 



THE COST OF A POUND OF GRAPES. 



Mr. John W. Spencer, in speaking on this question, said, in 

 part : 



The Chautauqua grape belt, in the Lake Erie valley, is about 

 fifty miles long, hemmed in on the south side by a ridge of 

 precipitous hills, and the breadth of the valley available for 

 fruit-culture varies from three to five miles. Through the 

 centre of the valley runs a zone of gravel once the beach of 

 the lake when it discharged into the Mississippi Valley through 

 the gap where Chicago now stands. Between this beach-level 

 and the present shore of the lake there is a belt of clay, and 

 on the hillside a zone of glacial till. The gravelly land was 

 once the highest-priced and bore better crops of grain, the clay 

 was the best grass land and the hillside was a sheep pasture 

 covered with mulleins and briars. At first the gravel was 

 thought the most eligible for grapes, but now vineyards are 

 found on the clay and the glacial drift, on which latter place 

 the grapes are as good in quality and sometimes yield as 

 much in quantity. The cost ot the various processes in culti- 

 vation, such as cutting the curls, stripping brush from the 

 wires, stretching wires, tying, tillage, etc., from spring up till 

 the time of harvest, is about $9 .00 an acre. How much a nine- 

 pound basket costs depends on the man and his soil. In vine- 

 yards where there are no missing vines, and all are thrifty and 

 even, an acre will yield a thousand baskets, and often twelve 

 hundred, but the average grape grower of the region does well 

 if he gets five hundred baskets, and the careless vine dresser 

 gets all he deserves if he has two hundred and fifty. With five 

 hundred baskets to the acre each one will cost one and eight- 

 tenths cents. But this nine dollars which has been expended 

 since early spring does not take the grapes to the freight-car, 

 and, indeed, it pays for only one-quarter of the journey. The 

 cost of baskets, handling, picking, packing, attendance in 

 various ways and hauling is yet to be met, so that harvesting 

 the grapes cost $27.00 more an acre, making a total of $36.00. 

 In 1894 grapes were 11 }■£ cents a basket at the car door, or 

 $58.75 an acre, which lett $22 75 of profit. Out of this must be 

 taken the taxes, interest, wear of implements, posts, crates 

 and sometimes fertilizers, which, of course, vary in individual 

 instances. 



Fruit-growing is every year becoming more and more a profes- 

 sion which combines skill and science, and the man who is 

 best paid is he who raises the most difficult products. Fifty 

 men are competent to produce crops where there is one com- 

 petent to raise mushrooms, but mushrooms bring fifty times 

 as much a pound as grapes. The exceptionally skilled horti- 

 culturist can find a better business than growing grapes. The 

 man who raises five hundred baskets to the acre pays twice as 

 much for cultivating the same product as the man who raises 

 a thousand, but the difference is only $9.00 an acre. Superior 

 skill only tells in raising a crop. Large yields do not cheapen 

 the cost of harvesting and transporting. Superior fruit does 

 not bring superior prices under cooperative selling, as is done 

 in Chautauqua. The straggling bunches of the careless man are 

 dumped into the same cars with those of the most skilled grow- 



