680 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 15, 1892. 
should be grown. Any surplus stock may be cultivated in baskets 
and suspended from the roof. These are not only effective when 
in flower, but they are useful for cutting, and thus save those 
grown in pots for other decorative purposes. 
Calanthes do well in a compost of two parts fibry loam to one 
part of peat; sand should be added, a little charcoal, and some 
cow manure that has been passed through a sieve. Leaf mould 
may be substituted for peat. Last year I did not use peat, and the 
plants improved in size and the spikes were larger. The pots 
should be well drained, and the pseudo-bulbs potted just below the 
rim. The soil being of a light nature will settle and leave sufficient 
room for water by the time they are in active growth. If the 
pseudo-bulbs are placed in small pots to start with they may be 
slightly elevated above the rim. At one time I followed this 
practice, but it is not necessary, as I have found the plants do 
equally as well when placed at once in the pots in which they are 
to flower. 
After potting the plants should be placed where the temperature 
at night does not fall below 60°. The atmosphere should be close 
and moist; very little water will be needed at first, if over-watered 
Calanthes rarely do well. No more should be given than is 
really necessary to keep the soil from becoming dry. The 
supply should be gradually increased as the roots and growth are 
developed. 
Those to be placed in baskets may be started a number together 
in small pots. This I consider a good plan, as there is not the 
liability to give them too much water as when placed direct into 
baskets. Where the watering can be carefully attended to they can 
be placed into the baskets to start with. 
Few Orchids deserve more care or attention ; they well repay 
for the room they occupy and the labour expended upon them. A 
small house filled with them, when Adiantum cuneatum is employed 
as a groundwork, is most effective at this time of the year.—G. 0. 
PRICES AND QUALITY OF APPLES. 
Your correspondent “ W. P. W.” (page 502) hits the right nail 
on the head. The successful man in fruit growing in the future 
will be he who, no matter what may be the number of his acres, 
grows fine fruit, of good appearance and quality. It often annoys 
me to hear people say that fruit tree planting has been overdone, 
is being overdone, and that our markets are glutted with Apples which 
will not pay for the expenses of pulling and conveyance. Of course 
the markets are glutted with a certain sort of Apples, or rather I 
would say with fruit which by courtesy are called Apples, but which 
would more fitly be described as Crabs. These miserable speci¬ 
mens, the produce of old, worn-out, starved to death orchards, are 
simply almost unsaleable, and the sooner their owners recognise the 
fact the better it will be both for themselves and the public. 
Every market man knows the truth of all this, and were proof 
required it might easily be furnished. I well remember one day in 
1890 going into our local market and seeing tons of these poor 
Apples selling with difficulty at 3s. per bushel, when a man from 
the country arrived with a cartload of Apples grown upon pyramid 
trees, and sent in as they should be in prime condition, well 
coloured, and carefully handled. What a commotion he made. 
The lately unwilling purchasers rushed after him, and almost 
before be could unload his hampers the fruit was sold at 16s. per 
bushel; those who secured it looking upon themselves as fortunate, 
whilst many went away grumbling because they could not be 
supplied. 
Do we want another picture ? In the Journal of Horticulture, 
December 3rd, 1891, we read that the imports of American Apples 
into Liverpool during the first half of the previous season (1890) 
were 96,628 barrels, whereas up to the date of that issue, or half 
the season (1891), they reached the enormous number of 369,880 
barrels. Again, I take up a market report of October 7th, 1892, 
and find that the imports for that one week were—Liverpool, 
36,000 barrels ; Glasgow, 16,000 ; London, 13,000; making a total 
of 65,000 barrels sent into three of our ports during one week. 
Does this look like a falling off in the demand ? Then, again, the 
prices in 1891 ranged from 10s. to 20s. a barrel, whilst°in 1892 
they ran from 12s. to 18s., showing no diminution in price. It is 
scarcely necessary to say that this enormous and growing demand 
for American Apples is not from any merit they possess in point of 
quality, for the cooking varieties are not to be compared with good 
English fruit, but simply from their size and the fact that they 
are sorted and all the small ones left at home. Of course I expect 
to be told. that if the cooking varieties are inferior to our 
English fruit the Baldwins and Newtowns are quite the reverse. 
That may be the opinion of some, especially those to whose weak 
digestions the soft and melting fleshed American Apples are suited ; 
but I am sure the great majority will give their vote in favour of 
a neat, well-coloured, crisp Cox’s Orange Pippin, a verdict which 
I most heartily endorse. 
Your correspondent’s remarks are just what is wanted at the 
present moment. As he says, the old-world growers must find out 
by bitter experience that they are out of date ; but there are 
numbers who contemplate planting, and yet fear to launch their 
bark, hearing these dismal rumours of bad sales. To such, if there 
be any, who read your “Journal,” and probably, being seekers 
after knowledge, there will be many, I would say, Be bold. Fruit 
culture is yet in its infancy ; with a population consuming less than 
half the quantity of fruit per head that our Continental neighbours 
eat, with allotment gardens multiplying in our midst, and growing 
a few fruit trees just to whet the appetite and educate an enormous 
new fruit-eating public, there is every prospect that the demand 
for good fruit will increase by leaps and bounds. Only one word 
of caution is needed, Plant good kinds suitable to your district, and 
do not plant more than you can properly manage. Let the lesson 
of poor starved fruit be always before your mental vision, but 
never in your sight.—A. H. Pearson. 
The price of the Domino Apples—namely, 4s. fid. per bushel, 
as stated by your correspondent “ W. P. W.,” in your last issue, 
page 502, is widely different from 6s., which was stated pre¬ 
viously, and which I suppose was a price estimated before the fruit 
was gathered. I should also like to know whether 4s. 6d. is the 
market price or the net price home, for if it is the market price 
it would be reduced to 3s. 6d. or 2s. 6d., according to distance of 
the market. The average price, as stated by me in your issue of 
December 1st, was 2s. 9d., not 2a. as your correspondent quoted, 
so that our prices are not so widely different as appeared at first, 
especially if Is. 6d. a bushel is considered as immaterial. The price 
of 2s. a bushel, mentioned in my last communication (page 478), 
was an extreme price. Is 4s. 6d. a bushel also an extreme price — 
the other way ? 
“ W. P. W.” then refers to the different prices received by two 
different growers in Kent, the one a large grower whom he thinks 
does not attend well to his trees, and the other a small (?) one who 
only has 100 acres of ground, and who cultivates his ground well 
(respecting which your correspondent gives some interesting 
details), and by inference implies that I am to be classed with the 
former. In defence of my position and prices which I receive I 
may be allowed to state some facts without being considered 
boastful. My ground is at present only about 40 acres, all of 
which is under fruit cultivation, and which is my own property. 
My wages bill for men averages about £10 a week, or £500 a year, 
and for women as much as £30 a week in the season. My manure 
bill I estimate at about £500 a year, so that Ido not think it will be 
considered t neglect my ground either as regards cultivation or 
manure, and from the wages of the women it will be seen that the 
crops are usually heavy, for three-quarters of the ground has only 
been planted five years. Then as regards marketing. I send to the 
principal markets of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and from the 
three towns to which I have sent most constantly my salesmen 
have told me, unsolicited, that my fruit is acknowledged to be the 
finest and best packed that goes into them, and that it always 
realises the highest prices. The other salesmen give similar 
testimony. Because of my knowledge of the markets I am able to 
buy a quantity of fruit from various other growers within a radius 
of ten miles, as I can give them a higher price than they can 
otherwise get. Last year I bought about 130 tons, and this season 
about 60 tons. My outlay for baskets is about £800, and increases 
every year. 
I think I have said sufficient to show that my prices may be 
taken as at least fairly representative ones, and also that a con¬ 
siderable amount of capital is required for working a fruit farm 
well, as there are horses, vans, and many other things to take into 
consideration. Of course higher prices can sometimes be obtained 
from a special customer. My object in writing in the first place 
was simply in order that readers of your journal should not be 
misled by seeing 6s. a bushel stated as the price of Apples, when 
the average price of good sorts of Apples home to the grower has 
been very much Ie3S. I am glad to find that my views are supported 
by “ one of the largest fruit growers in Kent.” 
From statements which have appeared in some of the horti¬ 
cultural and other papers two things might be considered as 
axioms—first, that the present race of fruit growers are a set of 
blockheads ; and secondly, that if readers would only go into fruit 
growing it would be a sort of Eldorado. I do not think that 
“ w : P- W.” wishes to imply this, but the effect of his remarks, 
coming after such statements, must be taken into consideration. 
I do not deny there are some very poor fruit growers, as there are 
lawyers, gardeners, and others ; but I hardly think all are to be 
considered as belonging to this class. 
There are hundreds of men on the look-out for the best sorts, 
