The commercial growers usually bring in their apples loose in the wagon-box, and the apples are packed into barrels here.  This insures a clean barrel, properly packed.  It enables the buyer to look over the load as it is being unloaded.  One or two growers have a reputation good enough that the houses will buy their fruit barreled.  All small fruits are handled in the sixteen quart crates and are not repacked.  The grower delivers them as up to grade on his reputation, which will not last long if he does not furnish good berries.  The grower usually tells the wholesaler when they were picked and the condition they are in.  They do a cash business only.

Very little has been handled through the commission men of other cities.  A few carloads have been shipped to Minneapolis, but returns were not as satisfactory as when sold to the wholesale houses.  In shipping the grower has to take more risk and do more work, such as packing and loading the car, than when he sells to the wholesaler.  Most growers prefer to sell to the houses than to do this extra work, which they are neither used to, nor capable of handling.  Besides this, most growers do not have enough fruit at any one time to load a car.

There is no co-operative association at the present time, but the growers were trying to organize one last winter.  In a certain way there is an agreement among the small fruit growers, in that nearly all of them agree to market their fruit in the sixteen quart crate and stick to certain prices as far as possible, and not to cut prices under other growers.  This applies especially to the “direct to the consumer” trade.  There are no street venders to whom the growers can sell nor with whom they would have to compete, and there is no city market at Mankato.

Storage conditions have not been developed.  The wholesale houses have small storage rooms of their own, but do little storing of home grown products, as they ship them out as soon as they get a carload.  The stores store a few days in case they get an over-supply on hand.  The growers store apples in their own cellars, often keeping them until the following spring.  A few city people buy apples in the fall and store for winter use, but it is not very satisfactory for the storage houses do not regulate the temperature accurately enough.

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PRUNING OF CURRANTS AND GOOSEBERRIES.—­The main reason that currant and gooseberry bushes do not yield satisfactory crops from year to year is due to the lack of proper pruning.

Both currants and gooseberries produce their fruit on canes that are at least two years old, the first season being generally utilized for the growing of the canes, the second for the formation of fruit buds or spurs, and the third a full crop may be expected.  These canes will bear for two and even three years, but each year after the third they begin to show a decided decline—­the fruit becomes smaller