154 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



hand, planted in bearing orchards, any other crop than the peach is a heav>' 

 liability. While inter-cropping is not peculiar to New York orchards it 

 is probably more practiced in this State than in any other. Few, indeed, 

 are the plantations in this region that do not sustain themselves for the 

 first three or four years of their existence on the crops grown between the 

 trees. These are, or should be, hoed crops like potatoes, cabbage, beans 

 and cannery crops. He is a sloven, indeed, who would crop his peach- 

 orchard with grass or grain. Along the Hudson, small-fruits are looked 

 upon as permissible, but are everywhere discountenanced in western 

 New York. 



Occasionally the peach itself is planted as an inter-crop in apple- 

 orchards. The custom has little to recommend it and is not as common 

 now as it was a few years ago. The objection to the peach as a catch- 

 crop in the apple-orchard is that serious complications arise in orchard- 

 operations, the two fruits often requiring quite different treatment in their 

 care and, in spraying the apple, the peach is almost certain to be more or 

 less injured. 



In the matter of cultivation, peach-growers are not in the fog that 

 envelopes and befuddles apple-growers in New York. The peach so kixuri- 

 ates under thorough cultivation and, on the other hand, the jaundiced leaves 

 and hectic flush of the fruit speak so plainly of evil days when the trees 

 are in sod or unbroken ground that cultivation is universal. Cultivation, 

 as practiced by the best growers, consists of plowing the land in the spring 

 and then frequently stirring the soil until late July or early August. The 

 tools are as diverse as the kinds of soil. Whatever the details, the surface 

 must be kept level, covered with a dust-mulch and free from weeds. In 

 soils that are light, therefore hungry and thirsty, cultivation in the best 

 orchards is almost continuous. To do full duty in such a soil many men 

 cultivate weekly. Disking is sometimes substituted for plowing but this 

 is usually poor policy for the plow buries the mummied peaches that drop 

 in every orchard to scatter countless myriads of spores of brown-rot and so 

 perpetuate this plague of the peach-grower. Winter retreats so sullenly 

 in New York that it is sometimes difficult to find time and weather for 

 early spring plowing so that increasing numbers of peach-growers are 

 plowing their orchards in the fall. 



The cover-crop follows the last cultivation. There is a growing 

 suspicion in the State that the value of cover-crops in orchards has been 

 magnified. Comparative tests do not show that trees or small-fruits 



