The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1881-09-08
VOLUME Xiv.
Southern Fruits and Vegetables.

The Cincinnati Star prints a very inter
esting article on fruit culture in the South,
the larger portion Of which we reproduce
below. The Star is correct in assum Inc
that the very early maturity of fruits and
vegetables in the South will, every season
however plentiful the crops of the North
and West may prove, insure them a sure
and profitable sale
Louisiana has large districts well adapted
to fruit growing and to the production ol
the grape, while no portions of the Union
produce finer or earlier vegetables. Indeed,
there Is not a locality in the State where
with little industry and enterprise, fruits
and vegetables may not be made extremely
profitable crops.
The Cincinnati paper discourses on the
general subject of fruit growing n the South
as follows:
The perishabIe nature of most fruit
renders its cultivation remote from markets
dIscouraging, and TO great extent unprofit-
able. Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Ar
kansas, Mississippi ana Texas, are ali
adapted to the growth Of many OF these
almost spontaneously, that require great
care in more northern ATTITUDES, and even
then fail about as frequently as they sue
coed.
In former years all those States mentioned
were separated from the great Northern
CttitS where IHUSe commodities are con-
sumed in large quantities by distances that
made the attempt to place their pershable
products on sale there simply impossible
1t was in vain that the natural peaches
from the planted pit and unbudded grew
large and luclous on the sunny slopes OF the
Tennessee hills and along the Arkansas
valleys that biackberries thrived upon the
fields of Southern Kentucky; that the
apples on the plateaux of the Cumberland
Mills were large and rosy as nowhere else,
almost, under the sun that grapes hung
in clusters to make Bacchus giddy, even
with delight in nearly all the States emu
merated, upon the vines that nature planted
before they could be offered by the then
existing modes of transportation, in the
cities of the country where they were
demanded, they would have persisted utter
ly.
To a great extent these conditions now
are changed Cincinnati, st. Louis, Chica-
20, Louisville, Indianapolis and Cleveland
are now, by means OF railroads, placed in
prompt communication with all the South
ern States, while the use of refrigerator cars
for the preservation of perishable articles
is opening up future possibilities for trans
porting tender fruits long distance once uu-
dreamed Of Along the Cincinnati South
ern Railroad the cultivation of fruits and
early vegetables has already begun to as
sumo immense Importance.
Along the Iron Mountain Railroad, pen
etrating Arkansas in almost a direct line
from st. Louis, the same state of affairs Is
no. ad. thousands of dollars of berries,
peao hes. tomatoes, melons, early potatoes,
and all kinds of marketing loading down
the trains with their yearly increasing
abundaudanoe. and proving more profitable
far than any ordinary crops that the farmer
can produce Yet, in all the Southern
States combined 1t is a fact that tL1ge !
less fruit grown than in New York ana
New Jersey alone
There are fever peaches produced III
Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee than
in little Delaware, although those o. an in
terror quality are selling at retail in the
st. Louis and Cincinnati markets at this
time for from : - to 81 per bUshel, owing
TO the fact that the peach crop is total
failure in States north of the Ohio river,
as may generally also be said of apples and
other fruits
We call the Affection of these facts to
our Southern friends, and recommend their
more extensive cultivation of these articles.
If not profit bic every year, and they might
not meet with season often such rs this,
vet the fact Of their being 50 plqch earlier
than their Northern competitors, woQiG al,
most insure them profitable results amy
year