PEACH 



PEACH 



1233 



else small Juue-budded trees any time from October to 

 March; opeuiug furrows for the trees and cross-check- 

 ing the rows 18 to 22 feet apart; later plowing this land 

 and planting it in cotton, continuing it for three and 

 often four years. Two to four hundred pounds of low- 

 grade fertilizer is applied in drills for the cotton and 

 usually very thorough culture given; trees are allowed 

 to grow at will, their culture being incidental to the 

 cotton crop. In such orchards very little if any priming 

 is ever attempted. After the trees become so large as 

 to drive out the cotton, one plowing is given in winter, 

 then anything from fairly good culture to none at all 

 the rest of each season. Such a system results in many 

 "scrub orchards," that are not very profitable after six 

 or seven years. 



Specialists, who devote almost their entire time to the 

 Peach business, plant their trees mostly 16x16 or 18x18 

 feet and give them entire use of the land. The under- 

 signed, being a rather close pruuer, has about 150,000 

 trees planted 13x13 feet and about 175,000 planted 15 

 X 15 feet. 



All land is plowed deep, and sometimes subsoiled 

 before planting. Young orchards are given frequent 

 and thorough tillage up to mid-season, when 2 or 3 

 rows of cow-peas are drilled in at least 4 feet away from 

 the rows of trees; these and the trees are cultivated 

 frequently, until the peas have taken almost full pos- 

 session of the ground, and it is time for both the land 

 and trees to have a rest from cultivation. In the fall 

 when peas are ripe, enough are gathered for next year's 

 seed, after which hogs or mules maybe turned in to 

 pasture for a time. The stutible furnishes a tine winter 

 cover, and is turned down at first plowing iu February 

 or March, when summer culture begins, and at proper 

 time the orchard is again seeded to cow-peas, across the 

 former direction of the rows. Three years of this usu- 

 ally builds up a perfect orchard without the aid of any 

 other fertilizers, except possibly a very little about the 

 trees at time of planting to give them a start. 



Low-headed trees are the rule, the trunks seldom 

 branching over 18 inches up, and often 8 inches to 

 a foot from the ground. In one section of the writ- 

 er's orchard at Fort Valley, Georgia, he has 100,000 

 trees 8 years old, headed so low that in a full-crop 

 season like 1900, a man sitting on the ground could 

 have gathered fully one-half the fruit from each tree. 



1672. The three leaves at a joint, where i 

 fruit-buds are formtnfr. 



As a rule, the close cutting-back at time of planting, 

 and a general shortening-iu of the leading branches for 

 the first 2 or 3 years, is about all the pruning given, 

 even in the best orchards. Our own plan is to shorten- 

 in every year much of the past season's growth, and 

 from the central head often cut back 2 or 3 seasons' 

 growth; but under no circumstances are any of the 



good side shoots cut out that force themselves on all 

 the main stems when the top is properly headed back. 

 Figs. 1678, 1679. These little side branches have given 

 the writer several full crops of fruit, when without them 

 there has been failure. 



Soil and climate favor the very brightest of color on 

 all Peaches in the South; qualities of the soil and the 

 long, hot summer sun give a richness and 

 sweetness of flavor superior to any other 

 section of America, though the same varie- 

 ties are not as juicy or luscious as when 

 grown further North. The writer's obser- 

 vation leads him to believe that there is 

 more water and less of solid matter in the 

 Peach the further one goes North with its 

 production, and while one can eat more of 

 the northern Peaches ripe from the tree it 

 takes the southern-grown Peach to put fat 

 on one's ribs. During the past ten years, 

 besides very heavy plantings by southern 

 landowners, northern fruit men singly and 

 in corporations have planted extensively of 

 Peaches all through the South, most largely 

 in Georgia to the south and west of Macon, 

 within a radius of 50 miles. 



The orchards in connection with cotton 

 plantations run all the way from 10 to 100 

 acres in extent, while the " straight - out 

 Peach farm" seldom has as few as 50 acres 

 in fruit, more of them having from 100 to 

 200 acres, while orchards all the way from 

 300 to nearly 3,000 acres in extent are no 

 uncommon sight. Samuel H. Rumph, at 

 Marshallville, Georgia, has more than 1,000 

 acres superbly cultivated in orchard; the 

 writer's orchard at Fort Valley, Georgia, 

 has considerably more than 2,000 acres in 16'3' Fruit- 

 fruit trees, 335,000 of which can be seen ^^%^ "jf 

 from an outlook on the central packing wi^h fe^? 

 house. Rows of trees lK-2 miles in length ^^j ^^_ 

 stretching away in all directions give a tween, 

 powerful impression of the Georgia Peach 

 industry, which turns out 2,500 to 3,000 car-loads of 

 Peaches in the 6 or 7 weeks of a busy picking season, 

 and yet has not one-half its planted trees in really full 

 fruitage. 



Growth usually ceases early in August, and the trees 

 shed their leaves the last of September, a month or 6 

 weeks before any frosts come. Should the fall be warm 

 and wet, some fruit-buds will be forced into bloom, while 

 the great majority will remain dormant until late Jan- 

 uary or early February, when spring growth commences. 

 The season of full bloom is usually about the first week 

 in March, though it varies all the way from February 15 

 to JVIarch 25, and no matter whether early or late, the 

 entire blooming season of most varieties covers a period 

 of nearly 3 weeks. While spring frosts are the greatest 

 menace to southern Peach culture, this long blooming 

 period often gives a chance for a setting of fruit be- 

 tween the various frosts, or after the last one, from 

 some belated buds. Even with these varying chances 

 of escaping between frosts, about one year in three 

 Jack Frost is master of the situation, and there is no 

 Peach crop. Two other serious troubles hamper the 

 southern Peach cultivator — curculio and monilia or 

 brown rot. Curculios are very abundant; beginning early 

 in April, they keep up their destructive work until the 

 end of the fruiting season. When the crop is abundant 

 frequent thinning of the stung specimens and burn- 

 ing them prevents serious harm, although the extra 

 expense is considerable ; but in seasons of short or 

 moderate crops trees must be jarred daily and the cur- 

 culio gathered on sheets or canvas trays and destroyed. 

 During the season of 1896, in the Hale orchard, 100,000 

 trees were freed from the curculio by jarring 50,000 trees 

 every other day for 7 weeks. A practically perfect 

 crop of fruit was harvested, and the orchard shipped 

 more sound fruit than any other 500,000 trees in the 

 state, or nearly one-quarter of Georgia's Peach crop of 

 that year. 



The early spring months at the South are inclined to 

 be pleasant and very dry. and the summer rains, which 

 are frequent and abundant when they do come, often do> 



