Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1917-01-11
County Fruit, Based ON
Thirty Years Of Experience Here

Strawberries do well here most
years but sometimes it gets too dry
about the time they commence to rip
en-. Strawberries must have room to
grow-they won't stand %crowding. If
they could be watered in a dry time
they would do well.
If | was going into fruit raising for
the market it would be right here in
South Dakota for we have a good
market right here at home. l have a
Milton crabapple tree that measures
43 inches around, one foot from the
ground. l have picked seven and a
half bushels from it in one year. My
largest Duchess tree measures 81
inches, foot up, and is owe thir-
ty years old. Imagine what the pro-
fit has been just on those two trees
the past thirty years.
| have always had a good price for
all the fruit l had to spare. A major
ity of it was sold at the farm to
neighbors and some hat lived ten
miles away came there to get apples,
plums and compass cherries.
Now l must tell you something of
fruit raising on the Pacific coast, as !
was out there two months last sum-
mer; that is, at Tacoma, Portland and
Vancouver. That was my third trip
out there. l have a nephew living
four miles out of Vancouver. While
there in July the Logan blackberries
were ripe. He had quite a large patch
well cultivated and wired up and the
canes were just black with them, I
said, Nov, Charley, you can give me
a job picking blackberries for a day
or two, He said, "They are not
worth picking as all they will pay for
them in Vancouver is two cents a box.
They have to be assorted, the ripest
ones for home use or cannery and
those a little green shipped east. With
the picking and boxes and crates to
buy there is no money in them for
the grower"
Five years ago I was there in Sep
TENDER, just in prune drying time. l
went over to a dry house and bought
seventy pounds of the largest Italian
prunes for four cents a pound, while
at b same time a grade smaller were
selling here for fifteen cents a pound.
My nephew has an apple orchard. a
part of which was fall apples, with no
sale for them. Thee ider mills would
not pay enough for them to pay for
the picking and hauling to the mill.
Bartlett pears were about the same.
The low price at the n hardly
pays for the gathering and hauling.
l saw bushels and bushels of Bartlett
pears lie on the ground and rot. Win
ter pears and winter apples they can
sell, but the price is low. Prunes are
their money crop. My nephew said
the commission men, the railroads and
the retail dealers are the ones that
make the most money out of the fruit.
The grower gets the small AMOUNT.
That is why I said that if I was going
into the fruit raising business it would
be right here, for everything that we
can raise in the fruit line will sell at
a good price. While fall apples were
lying on the ground rotting out there.
they We're selling at $1.50 a bushel
here.
Il / was going to plant another
orchard here on high land / would set
apple trees not less than fifteen
inches deeper than they formerly
stood in the nursery. / did think I
would say nothing about deep plant
ing for it has been talked over for
and against several times, but there
are new members and others who
have not heard the discussions. WHY
] favor deep planting is that / have
had SO many apple trees die from root
freezing, that is, the root below the
graft. It is natural for trees to send
their roots deep into the ground for
moisture. There is no ulestiou h,1t