THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



33 



double the number of trees bearing in 1909 which the last census gives as 

 1,014,110. Certainly, too, orchards were never as well cared for as now. 

 Yet the percentage of unprofitable peach-orchards in the State is high — 

 at least fifty per centtim — for which several causes can be named; as, com- 

 petition and over-production with consequent low prices, poor distribution, 

 a series of seasons with much winter-killing, and a succession of cold, wet 

 springs. These are episodes in the industry hard to overcome. Of the 

 avoidable causes of the present high percentage of unprofitable orchards 

 perhaps the most common is the attempt to do too much whereby many 

 eventually come to bankruptcy. Another reason for the many unprofitable 

 orchards of the present is that the peach is a favorite fruit for beginners. 

 Profits in peach-growing are often liuing, the peach is an attractive fruit, 

 it seems easy to grow and the fruit-grower plants, to learn by experience 

 that peach-growing is not, as so often pictured, a pleasant and profitable 

 avocation but a most exacting vocation. 



Why is the peach so localistic? In particular, what has set the bounds 

 of the three restricted peach-areas in New York? To some extent, of 

 course, man-governed agencies have determined where peaches may or 

 may not be grown in the State. Peaches must move quickly and the 

 carriers must not dip too deeply in the grower's pockets; therefore markets 

 must not be too distant and transportation must be cheap and eflScient. 

 Again, peach-growing is a fine art and becomes thus a specialist's business 

 that must be learned in the peach-orchard ; therefore, even if soil and climate 

 be favorable, the industry lags if it lacks leaders to teach and to set the pace 

 in orcharding. But, outranking by far the agencies depending on man, 

 are natural conditions, two of which, climate and soil, predetermined where 

 peach-industries were to stand in New York. 



CLIMATE 



When are plant and climate trvily congenial? Perhaps the best test 

 is the degree to which the plant spontaneously accommodates itself to all 

 climatic conditions. Thus, the peach is ideally suited to climates in which 

 it maintains itself without the aid of man. The peach is perfectly at home, 

 then, in America only where it runs wild, — in parts of the South. In 

 the North, East and the far West, peaches seldom grow spontaneously; 

 and the cold of winter, the frosts of spring and the drouths of summer, 

 in these regions, yearly remind us that notwithstanding the generations the 

 tree has been grown in America it is still a stranger in a foreign country — 



