574 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



FEUIT-GKOWING IN THE COLONIES. 

 By H. Hooper, F.E.H.S. 

 [Read December 1, 1910.] 



The magnificent exhibition of fruit at the Colonial Fruit Show must 

 give rise to not a few reflections and questions in the minds of all 

 who saw it. 



Pre-eminently will arise the questions : How is all this done ? How 

 is this general level of superexcellence to be accounted for? How is 

 it that in regions so widespread the general perfection in " the fruit- 

 growing industry," as such exhibitions as this give proof of, has been 

 arrived at? 



The usual response to that reiterated question will undoubtedly be : 

 " Chmate," or, perhaps, " Soil and climate," and the matter will be 

 dismissed with an envious sighing for soils and climates that can do so 

 rtiuch. But is it to soil, or climate, or both, that the achievement is 

 due? Let us reflect for a moment how widely apart lie the British 

 Possessions which are able to display to us, here at the heart of the 

 Empire, such magnificent fruit-products. Are each and all of them 

 endowed with soil and climate so propitious that, upon that basis only, 

 a great fruit industry can be founded and maintained? Be it remem- j 

 bered that certain kinds of hardy fruits — kinds, and even varieties, 1 

 identical with some of those which the Colonies send us — can be raised 

 to a higher state of perfection in the soils and climate of the Mother 

 Country than in any other soils and climates the world over. From 

 that fact alone may we not infer that other agencies than these have ; 

 been at work in building up these great and growing colonial fruit 

 industries ? 



Our fellow fruit-growers in the Colonies have, I assure you, the 

 same soil problems to deal with as we have ; their plantations, for 

 the most part, have been established long enough for the supplies of. 

 plant food that were stored up in the soil when it was virgin to have 

 been long since exhausted, and they are faced, as we are faced, with 

 the necessity of renewing supplies of plant-food in the soil; they have 

 to mend soils as we do; they have to feed their trees for growth, or 

 for colour, flavour, and size of the fruit, as we have to feed our trees. 



We never tire of abusing this climate of ours for its vagaries." 

 Do our colonial friends, then, know nothing of " climate vagaries "? 

 Ask them. Ask the men who have grown this very fruit we have 

 been feasting our eyes upon : do they know nothing of late frosts, 

 or unexpected early frosts, of blistering heat-waves, or devastating 

 bizzards and hurricanes, of dry spells when rain is needed, or deluges 

 when fruit-trees are blossoming or fruit nearly ripe? They know all 



