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It
was now the season for me to bustle about, fix up my land, and get in my
crops. I examined it more carefully, walked over it daily, and made myself
thoroughly acquainted with it. As before mentioned, it had been utterly
neglected for a whole season, and was grown up with enormous weeds. These,
after a day or two of drizzling rain, when the seed-vessels were so wet as
not to allow their contents to scatter out, I mowed off, gathered into
several large heaps, and burned—thus getting rid of millions of
pestiferous seeds. Then I purchased ploughs, including a subsoiler, a
harrow, cultivator, and other tools. One acre of the whole was in clover,
another was set aside as being occupied by the dwelling-house, garden,
stable, and barnyard; but much the larger half of that acre was allowed
for garden purposes. This left me just nine acres for general fruit and
vegetable culture. I hired a man to plough them up, he finding his own
team, and another to follow him in the furrow with my subsoiler. The first
went down ten inches, and the latter ten more.
My neighbors were extremely kind with their
suggestions. They had never seen such deep ploughing, and warned me not to
turn up the old subsoil, and thus bring it to the surface. But they were
not book-farmers.
Now, this business of deep subsoil ploughing is a
matter of indispensable value in all agriculture, but especially so in the
planting of an orchard. No tree can thrive as it ought, unless the earth
is thoroughly and deeply loosened for the free expansion of the roots. If
I could have ploughed two feet deep, it would have been all the better. In
fact, the art of ploughing is in its mere infancy in this country. Too
many of us follow blindly in the beaten track. The first plough was a
tough, forked stick, of which one prong served as a beam, while the other
dug the earth as a Coulter. Of course the ploughing was only scratching.
It would have been preposterous to expect the ploughman of Hesiod's or of
Virgil's time to turn up and mellow the soil to a depth of fifteen or
sixteen inches. Down to the present age, ploughing was inevitably a
shallow affair. But iron ploughs, steel ploughs, subsoil ploughs, have
changed all this. It is as easy today to mellow the earth to the depth of
two feet, as it was a century ago to turn over a sward to the depth of six
inches. Besides, our fierce, trying climate, so different from the moist,
milder one of England, Ireland, or even Holland, whence our ancestors
emigrated, absolutely requires of us deep ploughing. Drought is our
perpetual danger. Most crops are twenty to sixty
per cent. short of what they would have been with adequate and seasonable
moisture. That moisture exists not only in the skies above, but in the
earth beneath our plants. Though the skies may capriciously withhold it,
the earth never will, if we provide a rich, mellow subsoil through which
the roots can descend for moisture.
The hotter and dryer the weather, the better our
plants will grow, if they have rich, warm earth beneath them, reaching
down to and including moisture. "We cannot, and we need not plough so very
deep each year to assure this, if the subsoil is so underdrained that the
superabundant moisture of the wet season does not pack it. Underdraining
as the foundation, and deep ploughing as the superstructure, with ample
manuring and generous tillage, will secure us ample crops, such as any
section of our country has rarely seen. Our corn should average seventy
bushels per acre. Every field should be ready to grow wheat, if required.
Every grass-lot should be good for three tons of hay per acre. Abundant
fruits should gladden our fields and enrich our farmers' tables. So should
our children no longer seek, in flight to crowded cities or the remote
West, an escape from the ill-paid drudgery and intellectual barrenness of
their fathers' lives, but find abundance and happiness in and around their
childhood's happy homes.
I laid out two hundred dollars in the purchase of
old, well-rotted stable manure from the city, spread
it over the ten acres, and ploughed up nine of them. I then set out
my peach-trees on six acres, planting them in rows eighteen feet apart,
and eighteen feet asunder in the rows. This accommodated a hundred and
thirty-four to the acre, or eight hundred and four in all. These would not
be in the way of any other crop, and in three years would be likely to
yield a good return. The roots of every tree underwent a searching
scrutiny before it was planted, to see that they harbored no members of
that worm family which is so surely destructive of the peach.
As trees are often delivered from the nursery with worms in them,
so many of these were infected. The enemy was killed, and the butt of each
tree was then swabbed with common tar, extending from where the roots
begin to branch out, about twelve inches up. It is just about there, say
between wind and water, at the surface of the ground, where the bark is
soft, that in June and September the peach-moth deposits her eggs. From
these is hatched the worm which kills the tree, unless picked out and
destroyed.
To perform this searching operation on a thousand
trees every year, would be laborious and expensive. There would also be
great danger of its being imperfectly done, as many worms might escape
the search, while the vital power of the tree would be seriously impaired
by permitting them to prey upon its bark and juices even for a few months.
Prevention would be far cheaper than curing. The offensive odor of the
tar will cause the moth to shun the tree and to
make her deposit somewhere else; while if any chance to light upon it,
they will stick to the tar and there perish, like flies upon a sheet of
flypaper.
The tar was occasionally examined during the
season, to see that it kept soft and sticky; and where any hardening was
discovered, a fresh swabbing was applied. The whole operation was really
one of very little trouble, while the result was highly remunerative.
Thoughtfulness, industry, and a little tar, did the business effectually.
I believe no nostrum of putting ashes around the butt of a peach-tree to
kill the worms, or any other nostrum of the kind, is worth a copper. The
only sure remedy is prevention. Do not let the worms get in, and there
will be no effort needed to get them out.
I planted none but the rarest and
choicest kinds. Economy of a few cents in the price of a tree is no
economy at all. It is the best
fruit that sells the quickest and pays
the highest profit. Yet there are still large quantities of fruit produced
which is not worth taking to market. The best is cheaper for both buyer
and seller. Hundreds of bushels of apples and peaches are annually made
into execrable pies in all the large cities, merely because they can be
purchased at less cost than those of a better quality. But it is a
mistaken economy with the buyer, as a mild, good-flavored peach or apple
requires less sugar, and will then make a better pie. Many persons have a
pride in, and attach too much consequence to a tree which sprung up
spontaneously on
their own farm, or perhaps which they have cultivated with some care; and
then numbers of comparatively worthless seedlings occupy the places that
should be improved by finer varieties, and
which, if cultivated, would afford a greater profit.
It is as easy to grow the choicest as the meanest
fruit. I have a relative in Ohio who has a peach orchard of eleven acres,
which has yielded him five thousand dollars in a single season, during
which peaches were selling in Cincinnati at twenty-five cents a bushel. It
is easy to understand that his orchard would not have produced him that
sum at that price. No, it did not. He received two dollars a bushel more
readily than his neighbors got twenty-five cents for the same variety of
peaches, and this is how he did it. When the peaches had grown as large as
a hickory nut, he employed a large force and put on one hundred and
eighty-five days' work in picking off the excess of fruit. More than
one-half of the fruit then upon the trees was carefully removed. Each
limb was taken by hand, and where, within a space of eighteen inches,
there would be probably twenty peaches, but six or seven of the fairest
would be left to ripen. Thus, by carefully removing all but the strongest
specimens, and throwing all the vigor of the tree into them, the peaches
ripen early, and are remarkable for size and excellence of quality.
But this was labor! Seven months' labor of one man
in a small peach orchard! But be it so—the net
profit was between three and four thousand dollars. If he had neglected
his trees, the owner's profits would have been a crop of peaches hardly
fit to feed the pigs. I have profited largely by following his example,
and will relate my own experience when the returns of my orchard come in.
I intend to be particular touching my peach orchard,
as well for the gratification of my own pride, as an incentive to those
who cannot be made to believe Ten Acres Enough. My success with it has far
outstripped my expectations; and I pronounce a peach orchard of this size,
planted and cultivated as it can be, and will be, by an intelligent man
not essentially lazy, as the sheet anchor of his safety. I was careful to
plant none but small trees, because such can be
removed from the nursery with greater safety than large ones, while the
roots are less multiplied, and thus receive fewer injuries; neither are
they liable to be displaced by high winds before acquiring a firm
foothold in the ground. Many persons suppose that newly planted trees
should be large enough to be out of danger from cattle running among them;
but all cattle should be excluded from a young orchard.
Moreover, small trees make a better growth, and are
more easily trimmed into proper shape. All experienced horticulturists
testify to the superior eligibility of small trees. They cost less at the
nursery, less in transportation, and very few fail to grow. One year old
from the bud is old enough, and the same, generally, may be said of apples
and pears. I dug holes for each tree three feet
square and two feet deep, and filled in with a mixture of the surrounding
top-soil and leached ashes, a half bushel of the latter to each tree.
Knowing that the peach-tree delights in ashes, I obtained four hundred
bushels from a city soap-works, and am satisfied they were exactly the
manure my orchard needed. Every root which had been wounded by the spade
in removing the tree from the nursery, was cut off just back of the wound,
paring it smooth with a sharp knife. The fine earth was settled around the
roots by pouring in water; after which the mixture of earth and ashes was
thrown on until the hole was filled, leaving a slight depression round the
tree, to catch the rain, and the tree at about the same level it had
maintained when standing in the nursery.
I did not stake up the trees. They were too small to
need it; besides, I should be all the time on hand to keep them in
position. Being a new-comer, I had no straw with which to mulch them, to
retain the proper moisture about the roots, or it would have been applied.
But the season turned out to be abundantly showery, and they went on
growing from the start. Not a tree was upset by storm or wind, nor did one
of them die. I do not think the oldest nurseryman in the country could
have been more successful.
This operation made a heavy draft on the small cash
capital which I possessed. But small as it was, it was large enough to
show that capital is indispensable to successful farming. Had I been
without it, my orchard would have been a mere hope, instead of a reality,
and I might have been compelled to wait for years before feeling rich
enough to establish it. But when the work of planting was over, my
satisfaction was extreme; and when I saw the trees in full leaf, giving
token that the work had been well done, I felt that I had not only
learned but accomplished much. I had been constantly on the ground while
the planting was progressing—had seen for myself that every tree was
cleared of worms—had held them up while the water and the earth and ashes
had been thrown in and gently packed about the roots—and had given so much
attention in other ways, as to feel sure that no part of the whole
operation had been neglected; and hence I had a clear right to regard it
as my own job. The cost of planting this orchard was as follows:
804 trees at 7
cents....................$56.28
Planting them, 2 cents.................
16.08
Ploughing and harrowing...............
20.00
400 bushels of ashes....................
48.00
Manure......................................
200.00
Total $340.36
I have unfairly saddled on the orchard the whole
charge of two hundred dollars for manure, because it went to nourish other
crops which the same ground produced. But let that go—the land was quite
poor, needed all it got, and I had no faith in farming without manure. Had
my purse been heavy enough, the quantity should
have been trebled.
As I am writing for the benefit of others, who, I
hope, are not yet tired of peaches, let me add that this fruit will not
succeed on ground where a previous orchard has been recently grown;
neither can one be sure of getting healthy trees from any nurseryman who
grows his on land from which he had recently produced a similar crop. The
seed must be from healthy trees, and the buds from others equally free
from disease. The peach, unless carefully watched and attended, is a
short-lived tree. But it returns a generous income to a careful and
generous grower. Of latter years the worm is its most formidable enemy.
But with those who think a good tree is as much worth being taken care of
as a good horse, there will be neither doubt nor difficulty in keeping
the destroyer out.
Ten well-grown, bearing trees, which I found in the
garden, were harboring a hundred and ninety worms among them when I
undertook the work of extermination. I bared the collar and roots of each
tree as far as I could track a worm, and cut him out. I then scrubbed the
whole exposed part with soap-suds and a regular scrubbing-brush; after
which I let them remain exposed for a week. If any worms had been
overlooked, the chips thrown out by their operations would be plainly
visible on the clean surface at the week's end. Having tracked and cut out
them also, I felt sure the enemy was exterminated, and covered up the
roots, but first using the swab of common tar,
applying it all round the collar, and some distance up.
These garden-trees were terribly sacrificed by the
worms. But the cleaning out I gave them was effectual. The soap-suds
purged the injured parts of the unhealthy virus deposited by the worms,
leaving them so nice and clean that the new bark began immediately to
close over the cavities, and soon covered them entirely. I thus saved ten
valuable bearing trees. Then I shortened in the long, straggling branches,
for the peach will certainly grow sprawling out on every side, forming
long branches which break down under the weight of a full crop at their
extremities, unless the pruning-knife is freely used every season. All
this was the work of less than a day, and shows that if peach orchards
perish after bearing only two or three crops, it may be attributed solely
to mere neglect and laziness on the part of their owners. They plant
trees, refuse to take care of them, and then complain if they die early.
The world would soon be without pork, if all the pigs were as much
neglected. These ten trees have never failed to produce me generous crops
of luscious fruit. I cannot think of any investment which has paid me
better than the slight labor annually required to keep them in good
condition.
I have tried with entire success two other methods
of protecting peach-trees from the ravages of the worm. I have found
gas-tar equally effectual with the common tar, and much more easily
obtained.
But care must be taken not
to cover a height of more than four to six inches of the butt of the tree.
If the whole stem from root to branch be covered, the tree will surely
die. Another method is to inclose the butt in a jacket of pasteboard, or
even thick hardware paper, keeping it in place with a string, and lowering
it an inch or two below the ground, so as to prevent the fly having access
to the soft part of the bark. These jackets will last two or three years,
as they should be taken off at the approach of winter, to prevent them
from becoming a harbor for insects. But they are an infallible
preventive. I have recently procured a supply of the thick tarred felt
which is used for making paper roofs, to be cut up and turned into
jackets. This material will last for years, being water-proof, while the
odor of the gas-tar in which it has been steeped
is peculiarly offensive to the whole tribe of insects.
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