CHEAPER PRODUCTION OF FRUITS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1675, 29 September 1887, Page 3

CHEAPER PRODUCTION OF FRUITS.

That there is not so much money made on email fruits as there used to be is certain, saya the American " Cultivator," but it does not follow that even with apparent gluts the price is lower than the fruit can be produced for, under favorable oircumstancos It needs pretty close figuring, both m growing and harvesting cheaply, and m getting as large product as possible from an acre. Men with families of children who can do much of the pick make money, while they who h're every particle of work done by adults will often km Hence the successful fruit grower is apt to locate hitnaelf near eouio largo village or city where the labour of women and children can be employed at cheap rates. Yet this is less important than having abundance of labour m keeping down weeds and plenty of manure to secure the largest possible product per acre. .On this last point more depends as regards the cheap product on of fruit than any other. It costs more to po. rly cultivate and manure two acres than to thoroughly cultivate and manure one, and the product ii larger and better on the Bn'all urea. The days have gone by when oven the commonest and most easily raised fruits can be successfully grown under a Bystem of neglect. It is harder and more uncertain work to produce an *pple crop every year now than it used to be to grow peara or the smaller fruits. Ir. requires skill to tight Insect enemies that fifty years Rgo were almost unknown. Probably, also, as some elements In the soil are exhausted by cultivation, trees need more and different manures than were forme r'y considered essential, It is the lack of skilled labor that makes fruit-growing unprofitable, as it undoubtedly is to thousands who have begun It under the impression that this waß the quiok and easy way to make mouf.y. It U this only to those who thoroughly understand the business. Where a man can gr^w 200 bushels of strawberries or four to five tons of grapes on an acre, as bos been done, there 1b ltytle danger tha,t the price will fall below payirg rates. There is less competition ,|fri fruic-growjng than m any branch of {grain farming, and the complaints that fruit cannot be sold at a profit come mainly from thoße svho have begun thiß bus}r,GßS without understanding jts requirements or the cheapest and best tnethoda of producing and marketing,