APPLE FARMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 999, 24 April 1891, Page 23

APPLE FARMS.

The success attending recent shipments of apples from Canterbury to the London market has raised the question whether it would not be a paying investment to form an apple growing company in the Wellington pvovince. Almost anywhere in the Hutt, Manawatu, or Wairarapa distriots apples grow remarkably well. They develop truer flavour than they do in the sub-tropical climate of the far north, and being of a more hardy growth stand the long journey to London better. It has been found that colonial apples have realised prices in Covent Garden which pay the exporter well. The Styx Company in Canterbury have by their late shipment made a very good start in apple exporting, and there is no reason why their success should not be imitated in this province. A company with a modeialo capital laying out say from 203 to 500 acres in choice varieties of apples would have extraordinary advantages over a number of small growers, whose total acreage of orchard might mount up to the same area. The Tasmanians are sending over twenty thousand cases per week to London. There is room for us to do that amount from the port of Wellington alone. The great difficulty about fruit export here at present is that we cannot get large supplies of anyone kind. Talcea golden russet, for example. To make a successful trade with golden russets, we should require to be able to supply from 5000 to 10,000 cases of that one variety alone, and so on with other kinds. Take the case of the apples exhibited at the late Horticultural Show in this town, grown by Mr Blomquist at Carterton. The grower says he can keep the specimens he exhibited, Reinette du Canada and Ohinemuri Dunne s Seedling, right up to the month of November. With proper care in handling and packing, those apples should reach London in sound condition. Their size and beauty of form and flesh would sell them freely. But it would be of little use from a commercial point of view to ship only some fifty or even 100 cases. What the great buyers in London require would be a large supply to draw from. Suppose for example that either of the above apple 3 suited the English market, there would be a demand for whicli even 50,000 case 3 would be of very small measure. A fruit company could start an orchard on practical lines; that is, they could grow quantity and quality, neither being auy use without the other. The Americans, more especially the Californians, have solved one great feature in fruit growing. They grow large quantities of any ono particular variety. They are thus enabled, to a great extent, to control the markets where smaller growers would fail. It is no uncommon thing in California to see a man devote 300 acres or even more to one variety of fruit, say for example choice growths of peaches. With that quantity lie can do a paying trade and make for his orchard a wide known name. An apple conmany need not expend a large amount of capital at the onset. If it was undertaken, thorough work would have to bo done at first and a proper start made. We have experienced men in our midst who are competent to give advice as to the best growths to cultivate, and we have men who are experienced in tlie best methods of packing and shipping the fruit. We should like to see this question taken up with some spirit. Already it is talked of in several quarters. There wants but energy and enterprise on the part of our leading citizens to work up the scattered atoms into a solid concrete mass.