The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1894-06-30
FARMER AND PLANTER,
The PINEAPPLE.
An Industry That Is Proving Profitable
to Florida Planters.

an industry That Is Proving Profitable
to Florida Planters.
The pineapple is one of the best
known and most relished of the trop-
ical fruits. There are a great many
varieties of ''pines," as the natives are
won't to call them, but the Sugarloaf
and the Strawberry or Red Spanish are
the most common on the markets. 1t
will be slow and hard to educate the
people on the merits of the different
varieties of pines, as it has proved to be
in the case of the orange. The Porto
Rico is to pines as the great Navel is to
oranges 1T is large and snowy,
but really not more luscious.
Some of the various queens
are quite melting and delicious
Though, as in the case of or
anges, much depends on conditions of
soil, season. culture and fertilization.
The same pines grown in Florida are
superior to the Cuba or Jamaica fruit,
and so of the main land and the Florida
Keys, the former being superior. Pine
culture has just begun in Florida on
the eastern coast. or Indian river re-
gion; yet several hundred thousand
crates have gone to market in the last
year, and some small fortunes have
been made.
The profits may be said to run from
5000 to $4,000 per acre, according to
variety, culture, season and other con-
tingencies. The larger mentioned
profits come largely from the sale of
slips and suckers of the new or finer
varieties; some of these bringing fif-
teen to twenty-five cents each, while
the fruit sells for as much One grow
er iii Orange county claimed to have
realized $4,000 from one acre in one
season. am not so optimistic as to
expect so much from this industry, but
1 do expect to see the thousands of
acres of palmetto and oak scrub lands
about me here on the little sub-penin-
suln, Pinellas, growing thousands of
carloads of this finest of all Florida
fruits in the next decade. On com
mercial scale, it has not yet been
started on the western coast, but
am confident that another sum-
mer will see the first plantation
started. The whitest, poorest sand
hume seems the natural home of this
fruit. They require fertilizing lit
tie, but will pay for all that is given
them. They delight in partial shade,
hence many fancy varieties are grown
under latticed sheds. l should prefer
TO treat them in this way, as extra care
makes extra fruit.
Good pineapple land is plenty, and
much cheaper than has been for sew
eral years in these parts. Once plant
ed, they will fruit from the same roots
for three to five years. The first cost
of plants runs from two and half
cents TO twenty-five cents each, accord
ing to variety.
The cultivation is hardly to be con-
sidered, as a scuffle hoeipg or q little
weed-pulling is about all that is re-
quired. The pineapple crop does not
interfere at all with the orange crop,
as it comes along after the orange crop
is laid by.
The pine, of course, Is sensitive to
frost, but like the banana, it will soon
recover from the little scorching of
the leaves it occasionally gets in this
latitude.
Should the markets ever be glutted
with the fresh fruit, canneries can
work up and consume great quantities
of it, but it is hardly probable that SO
limited an area could produce super
abundance of so fine product. There
is great fortune for the pineapple
farmer. VIM. p Nedd, in Di xie
Warmer.