Homer N. Chase & Co., Geneva, New York 
29 
A profitable field of Blackberries, showing the restilts of careful cultivation 
SMALL FRUITS 
Fresh fruit may be considered one of tlic necessities of life — tlie human system needs it as a 
food and as a medicine. Beginning with the luscious strawberry, and followed almost at once 
by the bush fruits, one finds all of them desirable and appetizing — far better, too, when picked in 
your own garden, damp with the dew of the morning, than when you are obliged to purchase 
from a corner grocery or of the street huckster. 
Even the little yard of the city dweller can be made to produce small fruits in quantities suf- 
ficient for a small family, thus contributing to the health and pleasure of all, as well as reducing 
the cost of living; for by producing his own fruits the grower escapes the high prices demanded 
in the market. A small outlay will purchase an assortment of small fruit plants that each year 
will produce more than enough delicious, wholesome fruit to repay the cost of the plants. The 
plants from the Chase Nurseries will thrive almost anywhere, and yield bountifully; in fact the 
quantity will be suflicient to supply the family with an abundance of fresh fruit during the 
season, and furnish a liberal amount for preserving. 
The man who undertakes small-fruit growing as a business has a great opportunity. The 
markets are never fully supplied and the prices are always high. Small fruits bring quick returns; 
you do not have to wait five or ten years for the first crop, and if planted as fillers in the orchard 
they will bring profits from the land the second year. There is no better investment than small 
fruits when grown in connection with orchard fruits, such as peaches, apples, etc. 
Generally the small fruits requirt a deep, rich, loamy soil ; but a soil that will produce good 
miscellaneous farm crops will be suitable for these fruits. Deep plowing, the deeper the better, is 
important. The land should then be fitted as for corn, potatoes, or other root crops. Fertilizing 
with stable manure worked in about the roots, clean cultivation, and careful pruning, will increase 
the yield, the size, and the quality of the fruit. Good care, with small fruits, as with all others, 
is repaid many times over in actual cash returns. 
Small Fruits at Chase Nurseries are given the same careful attention and skillful cultivation 
that is bestowed on our fruit trees. The plants are examined for signs of disease or scale, and 
if such are found, which is rare indeed, the affected plants are at once destroyed. We intend to 
send out only clean, healthy plants, free from scale or pests of any kind, and to this end we have 
constructed a scientifically planned fumigating house, where not only small fruits, but every tree 
and shrub, are treated with hydrocyanic acid gas before shipment. 
