Fruit-growing in America.

Manawatu Herald, 5 April 1894, Page 3

Fruit-growing in America.

The London correspondent of an Australian paper gives particulars of fruit growing in Oregon and British Columbia, from which we extract portions of much interest. In Oregon owing to the wet prunes are all artificially dried, and the growers hold that the system is much superior in results to sun-dry-ing. One grower pruned his trees so as to admit as much light and heat as possible through them, and he considered 2cwt. per tree of green fruit a good average crop. Oregon will soon have as large an area under prunes as California. On the banks of the Columbia river at the foot of Mount Hood is one of the best apple districts of the Pacific Slope. The writer says ; — What struck me more than anything else there was the very marked difference between the apples grown in. the* mountains and those from the plains. Among them were two at least that will be familiar and should be deserving favourites with your readers, viz., the King of Tomkins County and the Gravenstein. Those, from, the plains were of medium flatness, size, and colour like ours, while the mountain-grown specimens were very richly coloured and remarkably elongated, and in the case of the Gravenstein ridged on the sides and round the calyx. I tasted there for the first time apples grown in a really cold climate, and I was delighted with the orispness, lusciousness, and flavour of the trait, and fully realised then that we in a .warm climate must not- expect to grow fruits that are' best fitted for a cold climate, and reproduce all the special qualities which only such a climate will produce. ■•jjihree appless that I particularly ndted .were Kay, a brilliantly-colored, medium-sized fruit ; the Halom, an apple that the grower had lately received from Germany, and one that is much like and almost rivals the Gravenstein in some points ; and j lastly, the Blue Permain, a large, conical, dark purple fruit. A curiosity was a plate of small seedless apple3, grown within ten miles of the snow-line of Mount Hood, which I consider of no value except as a curiosity. A handy form of package used by one of the packing firms for tilth' jams is a very cheap wooden buokot witjift wooden covei'^.^.wii'^.ajQdle. These are made to^hdld'froni" Sib to i 151b each, and stand a great deal of* knocking about. This jani retail 8 at 4£d per lb in the s bueket. ~ :