COMPARATIVE VALUE OP THE PEAE AND OTHER FRUIT CULTURE 



Let us allow twelve feet between each tree, the very nearest we can plant a top 

 spreading tree, and we find about three hundred trees upon the acre. 



If you have the soil, locality, and favorable seasons, you can certainly bring a 

 good many baskets to the market after the third or fourth year ; but the objection 

 is that a fruit which we can raise so very easily is of little value in favorable sea- 

 sons, because everybody has half a dozen or so of peach-trees ; and, chiefly, 

 because parts of Delaware and Maryland, &c. &c., are covered with peach 

 orchards, coming earlier, and beating ours in the markets. Another objection is 

 the shortness of their season. You must sell the products of your orchard at 

 short notice, and perhaps in overcrowded markets ; you cannot keep peaches ; 

 nor do they last, in a given locality, over two months, from the Early York to the 

 Crawford Late or Late Heath. Then, you have severe winters, killing the weaker 

 varieties, killing most of the blossoms in their dormant state ; spring frosts, 

 nipping all the glorious pink blossoms in a single night. You have the gum, the 

 borer, that pest of the peach-trees, the yellows, and that eternal scoundrel, the cur- 

 culio, turning his attention to the peach when he cannot find plums or apricots 

 enough to suit himself. 



As you see, the list of drawbacks for the peach is long. The result is that it 

 has become a very uncertain crop in parts of the union where it was once the 

 most profitable fruit. Let us not imagine that a peach orchard does not require 

 cultivation. It is more than time to do away with the absurd idea that fine fruit 

 can be grown for a certain length of time in neglected soils and without proper 

 attention given to pruning, cleaning, and manuring. 



We now come to the pear, and we find that by grafting hardy varieties and good 

 growers upon the quince-stock, to bring these into early bearing, and weaker or slow 

 growing, and, of course well-bearing varieties, upon the pear stock, we can, 

 without any difficulty, plant our pyramids only eit^ht feet apart, giving from six 

 hundred and seventy to six hundred and eighty trees to a single acre of ground. 

 You see that my attention is directed to pyramids, not to widely spreading cider 

 pears. I neither recommend nor discard quince-grafted trees ; I leave that 

 question entirely aside. Many varieties, as the Bartlett, the Duchesse, &c., if 

 kept in pyramidal shape and under judicious treatment, will bear as well and about 

 as early upon the pear stock, as other varieties will do upon the quince. Those 

 who have not succeeded in raising good and abundant fruit from their quince-grafted 

 trees, must not lay the fault upon the tree, but perhaps upon an injudicious selec- 

 tion of varieties, want of proper care and pruning, bad planting, &c. &c, I say 

 so, because I succeed without any difficulty, and that I have seen many others 

 succeed in the same way. I never said that a tree, weakened by an artificial pro- 

 cess, did not require luore attention and skill than a free wild standard. Can 

 we raise celery, cauliflowers, lettuce, in a grass plot or among weeds six feet high, 

 as I have seen tried in many loould-be orchards ? . . But to return to our subject. 



A sound pear-tree from the nursery, if well planted and cared for, will bear 

 sometimes the very first year, and most certainly the third year after its planting, 

 if attention be paid to what is stated above. By years of experience I can safely 

 expect from every tree in perfect condition, ten fruits (on an average) the fifth 

 year after its planting ; and some dozens about the tenth year. But let us say : 

 ten Bartletts, or Duchesse, &c., upon every tree will bring in round numbers from 

 six thousand five hundred to seven thousand fruits, at how much a piece ? I have 

 seen hundreds of dozens sold from six shillings to three dollars a dozen, but let it 

 be something like two or three cents apiece ; that would bring from $120 to $200 

 for the crop of six hundred and eighty or seven hundred trees the fifth yea 

 creasing every subsequent year. 



