SOFT FRUITGROWING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20538, 12 April 1930, Page 13

SOFT FRUITGROWING.

NEGLECTED CHANCES.

GREAT SCOPE IN AUCKLAND.

AN AMERICAN'S IMPRESSIONS

" You have unemployment here, I am told, and you nre importing prunes, figs, oranges and other fruit —in a country like this—l simply cannot understand it," said Mr. E. Wagner, a leader of the fruit industry in tho State of Washington. who is spending a holiday in Auckland.

After several weeks in North Auckland and parts of the Waikato, Mr. Wagner is convinced that this part of New Zealand offers almost limitless possibilities for growing the fruits mentioned, and others as well. If the industry were developed, he thinks, there would be work for all.

Mr. Wagner's acquaintance with New Zealand goes back 24 years. In 190 1 } he began to ship apples from Vancouver to Auckland by mail steamer, and was the principal man in the trade until 1918, when he retired from it. In October. 1908, being unable to get space on the Marama, he chartered a lumber steamer, the Den of Ruthven, loaded her with a cargo of apples and personally sold the whole shipment at Auckland and Sydney. making a large profit on the deal, lie eventually left the trade because the development of cold storage for fruit in Australia and New Zealand caused the demand for North American apples to fall off. Lemons and Grapefruit. On his present holiday Mr. Wagner has not concerned himself with the Auckland apple industry, although he was a pioneer apple-grower in the Wenatchee Valley, Central Washington, where he has 500 acres of orchards on irrigated land and a large lumber mill for the production of fruit cases. What has interested him most is the growing of subtropical and stone fruits as he has seen it, and as he believes it can be carried on in future. " I really think you have tho best climate in the world for fruit," be said yesterday. " California is nothing to it. Why, things grow here all the year round. In the Bay of Islands 1 saw trees 16 months old bearing 30 or more lemons." He produced some specimens and remarked upon their thin, smooth skins and large size. ' 'You could not ask for anything better than that," he declared. " I saw grapefruit trees of the same age with a dozen or more fruit, and the flavour was as good as (he best Californian—the kind you actually import. " At Kaeo I found a sheep-farmer who owned five grapefruit trees. He told me that he made £SO a year from the crops they bore, and lie gave away a lot to his friends as well. I asked him why he did not have 50 or 500 trees instead of five. His answer was, * Well, my principal occupation is shcepfarming. This is only a side line.' " Prunes at Morrinsville. The passion fruit, grown at Kerikeri astonished Mr. Wagner, who showed some examples 2jin. long, remarking that even they were not the choicest. He heartily commended the packing adopted by the Kerikeri growers in sending passion fruit to Wellington and the South Island. Each fruit was wrapped in printed tissue paper, and a dozen was contained in a neat carton sold at a fixed price.

"It seems absurd that you should I import prunes into New Zealand," he continued. "On a farm near Morrinsville I saw a clump of neglected plum trees. They turned out to bo several varieties of prune, including the French and a smaller Continental variety. They had not been tended for years, many blanches hnd broken down, there was long moss on the bark and they were infected with the woolly aphis, but still they bore abundantly. The low hills near Morrinsville are ideal prune country, far too good to bo used for grazing." Drying prunes for export was quite a simple matter, Mr. Wagner added. Artificial heat had to be used, and sulphur fumes applied first as a preliminary, but the plant was not expensive. Califotnian prunes were sold all over the world, even in France, the home of the industry. There was no reason why New Zealand should not find good markets abroad if she began production for export.