FRUIT GROWING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1821, 23 October 1884, Page 2

FRUIT GROWING.

(From the Wairarapa Standard.)

Among the many industries that should claim the' attention of our settlers is that of fruit growing, From time to time we have given interesting extracts from other quarters showing that " there is money in it," and we should like to see the matter taken up with more spirit by our settlers. The other day we came across a letter to one of the Wanganui papers from a settler in that district, in which he shows conclusively that on some lands fruit growing is before many other things, About sixteen years ago he purchased about 200 acres of hill bush land on tho No. 2 Line, It was altogether unfit for agriculture, and being a stiff clay subsoil it wa3 very bad

grazing land, Even now it requires 1| acres to graze a calf. He soon found out that he could not earn his daily bread by grazing, and he felled the bush and planted about 16 acres in fruit trens. He has now 300 trees bearing fruit, besides vines, gooseberry, aud currant bushes, (fee, and for the last ten years his orchard has given employment to two men throughout the summer and winter, and several women and children in the summer, and the pruduce has supplied the wacts of two families, consisting of 16 men,

women and children; so at the same rate 100 acres of fruit trees would give employment to 12 men, besides women and children, and supply the wants of 96 people. On the other.hand he had •100 acres of the same quality of land grazing sheej.i. It gives employment to one man half his time, and' barely supplies the wants of a family with four, so that the relative value to support a population is—grazing, 4; fruit-growing, 96. These figures are instructive and we commend the subject to the attention of our Wairarapa settlers.