AN ENGLISH FRUIT-FAEM IN THE MAKING. 



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AN ENGLISH FEUIT-FAEM IN THE MAKING. 

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

 [Read October 11, 1912; Mr. A. H. Pearson in the Chair.] 



I MAY say at the outset that although, by the title just announced, my 

 remarks are to be restricted to " the making of a fruit-farm in Britain," 

 yet, without digression from that subject, much of what follows is 

 applicable to the making of a fruit-farm in any country where the hardy 

 fruits of that country are, or may be, farmed for profit. 



The designation *' fruit- farm," though it has long been in use in 

 oversea Britain and the United States of America, is perhaps somewhat 

 novel to us. 



The term *' fruit-farming " may be taken to mean the cultivation of 

 fruit-bearing plants for commercial purposes on the broad areas and 

 broad, though well-defined, principles and practices of the " farm," as 

 distinct from the limited area and less rigid principles and practices 

 that legitimately pertain to the garden. 



In fruit-farming proper all considerations other than business ones 

 must be set aside ; the picturesque must yield to the economic, and the 

 practical dominate in design and execution. 



Success in any commercial undertaking — success arriving at an 

 expected and appointed epoch in the history of the business, and con- 

 tinuing smoothly thereafter — depends upon carefully conceived 

 initiatory plans, full knowledge of what may be legitimately expected, 

 and acquaintance with the methods whereby the " expected " is to be 

 most surely attained : the putting into execution of well-conceived 

 designs with a minimum of mistakes of the minor and reparable kinds, 

 and without any of the great, radical, irreparable errors which foredoom 

 an enterprise to failure. 



If this be true in relation to business enterprises in general, it is 

 emphatically true in regard to the business of fruit-growing. Probably 

 no other commercial undertaking depends so absolutely upon a sound 

 inception as fruit-farming does. Errors are bound to arise both in the 

 scheme and in its execution — room for improvement there will always 

 be, since advancing knowledge will better to-morrow what is held to be 

 the best to-day — but the fruit-farmer who has to a reasonable degree 

 equipped himself in theoretical and practical knowledge of his craft 

 need fall into none of those great radical mistakes in the inception of 

 his enterprise — in the making of a fruit-farm, that is — which, if they 

 do not ruin the concern outright, at least cause delays and disappoint- 

 ments, and call for expenditure in money and labour that is additional, 

 and might have been avoidable. Science and practice in horticulture 

 are ever advancing — never more rapidly nor more surely than in these 

 present days. We have to-day the benefit, as compared with cultivators 

 of even a decade ago, of koener and better organized research and of 



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