Success With Small Fruits | Page 6

are best adapted to different localities and soils. While no experienced and candid authority will speak confidently and precisely on this point, much very useful information and suggestion may be given by one who, instead of theorizing, observes, questions, and records facts as they are. The most profitable strawberry of the far South will produce scarcely any fruit in the North, although the plant grows well; and some of our best raspberries cannot even exist in a hot climate or upon very light soils. In the preparation of this book it has been my aim to study these conditions, that I might give advice useful in Florida and Canada, New York and California, as well as at Cornwall. I have maintained an extensive correspondence with practical fruit growers in all sections, and have read with care contributions to the horticultural press from widely separated localities. Not content with this, I have visited in person the great fruit-growing centres of New Jersey, Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; Charleston, S. C.; Augusta and Savannah, Ga,; and several points in Florida. Thus, from actual observation and full, free conversation, I have familiarized myself with both the Northern and Southern aspects of this industry, while my correspondence from the far West, Southwest, and California will, I hope, enable me to aid the novice in those regions also.
I know in advance that my book will contain many and varied faults, but I intend that it shall be an expression of honest opinion. I do not like "foxy grapes" nor foxy words about them.
CHAPTER II
THE FRUIT GARDEN
_Raison d'etre_
Small fruits, to people who live in the country, are like heaven-- objects of universal desire and very general neglect. Indeed, in a land so peculiarly adapted to their cultivation, it is difficult to account for this neglect if you admit the premise that Americans are civilized and intellectual. It is the trait of a savage and inferior race to devour .with immense gusto a delicious morsel, and then trust to luck for another. People who would turn away from a dish of "Monarch" strawberries, with their plump pink cheeks powdered with sugar, or from a plate of melting raspberries and cream, would be regarded as so eccentric as to suggest an asylum; but the number of professedly intelligent and moral folk who ignore the simple means of enjoying the ambrosial viands daily, for weeks together, is so large as to shake one's confidence in human nature. A well-maintained fruit garden is a comparatively rare adjunct of even stylish and pretentious homes. In June, of all months, in sultry July and August, there arises from innumerable country breakfast tables the pungent odor of a meat into which the devils went but out of which there is no proof they ever came. From the garden under the windows might have been gathered fruits whose aroma would have tempted spirits of the air. The cabbage- patch may be seen afar, but too often the strawberry-bed even if it exists is hidden by weeds, and the later small fruits struggle for bare life in some neglected corner. Indeed, an excursion into certain parts of Hew England might suggest that many of its thrifty citizens would not have been content in Eden until they had put its best land into onions and tobacco. Through the superb scenery of Vermont there flows a river whose name, one might think, would secure an unfailing tide from the eyes of the inhabitants. The Alpine strawberry grows wild in all that region, but the puritan smacked his lips over another gift of nature and named the romantic stream in its honor. To account for certain tastes or tendencies, mankind must certainly have fallen a little way, or, if Mr. Darwin's view is correct, and we are on a slight up-grade, a dreadful hitch and tendency to backslide has been apparent at a certain point ever since the Hebrews sighed for the "leeks and onions of Egypt."
Of course, there is little hope for the rural soul that "loathes" the light manna of small fruits. We must leave it to evolution for another cycle or two. But, as already indicated, we believe that humanity in the main has reached a point where its internal organs highly approve of the delicious group of fruits that strayed out of Paradise, and have not yet lost themselves among the "thorns and thistles." Indeed, modern skill--the alchemy of our age--has wrought such wonders that Eden is possible again to all who will take the trouble to form Eden- like tastes and capacities.
The number who are doing this is increasing every year, The large demand for literature relating to out-of-door life, horticultural journals, like the fruits of which they treat, flourishing in regions new and remote, are proof of this. The business of supplying fruit-