144 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



The peach is conspicuous among fruits for its ability to nourish itself 

 where the food supply is meagre — indeed it is the richest resource of 

 fruit-growers on soils deficient in the most important elements of plant- 

 food. This does not mean that peach-soils are cheap soils. Few other 

 crops thrive on peach-soils, which make them of little value except for this 

 fruit, but good peach-soils are so scarce that once their adaptabilities are 

 discovered they are seldom cheap. Peach-soils, as a rule, are but 

 moderately fertile. When too fertile, especially when rich in nitrogen, 

 the foliage is dense, the wood-growth is great, the season's wood does not 

 mature, the set of fruit is small, and the peaches lack size, color and flavor. 

 But if not rich, never poor. On a good peach-soil the trees should make 

 a relatively small, compact growth of firm wood which each season ripens 

 thoroughly; and, barring accidents, they should be annually fruitful of 

 large, highly-colored, well-flavored, properly-shaped peaches covered with 

 sparse and short pubescence. The fertilization of peach-soils is to be 

 considered in a separate topic. 



We have been generalizing as to the adaptabilities of peaches to soils. 

 Peach -growing, through keen competition and the great pleasure that a 

 finely finished prodvict gives the grower, has become a fine art. Now, in 

 the refinement of the industry, generalizations as to peach-soils are not 

 sufficient. Growers must find out what particular varieties grow best in 

 their particular soil. To be sure, there are cosmopolitan varieties, Elberta 

 for example, which thrive in a diversity of soils, but, for most part, each 

 distinct variety or type of varieties has special soil preferences the discovery 

 of which has often made a man a successful peach-grower. The pecul- 

 iarities which adapt a soil to a variety are not analyzable but appear he 

 peach-growers through intuition or experiment. 



Some fruits are made to grow in uncongenial soils by working them on 

 stocks adapted to the soil. Thus, the peach may be worked on plum- 

 stocks for heavy, clay soils. Little, however, has been done in forcing 

 the peach to adapt itself to a soil by consorting varieties and stocks. There 

 is no doubt, however, but that much may be done when the adaptabilities 

 of cions to stocks and stocks to soil are better known. 



LOCATIONS AND SITES FOR PEACH-ORCHARDS 



That peach-growing is not capable of equal development in all of the 

 agricultural regions of the country and State appears in page after page 

 of the history of this fruit. Climate and soil, as we have tried to show. 



