PEACH-BREEDING
But little effort has been made, as the histories of its varieties show, to breed peaches. All but a very few varieties have come from chance seedlings. Peaches were grown from seed for centuries and many types now come true when seeds are planted. After budded trees became the vogue, until Mendel's great discovery, breeding the peach consisted in selecting an occasional meritorious tree, multiplying it by budding and, if it had pronounced merit, turning it over to a nurseryman for the trade. The art progressed no further because selection was thought to be the fundamental process in improving plants and breeders preferred to work in fields where the harvests were more immediate than in tree-fruits. Now that plant-breeding centers around controlled hybridization, plants propagated vegetatively should receive quite as much attention as those grown from seed. Mendel has opened the door to intimate familiarity with some of the fundamental phenomena of hybridization, and, despite the difficult and complex literature the professionals are imposing on the art, chiefly discussions of methods and disputations about principles, the layman finds Mendelian laws easy to put in practice; and peach-breeding is certain to go forward in leaps and bounds as the irresistible fascination of the subject seizes peach-growers.
Meanwhile, as a foundation for future work, it becomes highly important to know how the varieties we have came into existence. The known histories of the many diverse kinds of peaches show that this fruit has been improved almost wholly through new varieties by chance hybridization—self-fertilized seed, selection and mutations are almost negligible factors. The following are the data: No case is recorded in The Peaches of New York of a variety known to have come from a self-fertilized seed. The seed parent is given for 214 varieties; the seed and pollen parents of 37 varieties. But 4 varieties are reported to have come from bud-mutations. Of chance seedlings, sorts from seed with neither parent known, there are 161. The origins of 1765 of the varieties described in The Peaches of New York are unknown. The total number of peaches described is 2181.
CHAPTER IV
PEACH-GROWING IN NEW YORK
The history of the peach, whether narrative or natural, shows that this fruit succeeds commercially only in restricted areas under special soil and climatic conditions. In the United States, as we have seen, the peach-industry has sprung up in a dozen or more distinct geographical regions, three of which are in New York. In discussing peach-growing in New York we must, first, determine the boundaries of its peach-regions; second, show the relative importance of the peach-industry in each; and, third, note the determinants that make favored parts of the State peach-regions.
The three main peach-areas in New York are the Hudson River Valley, the shore of Lake Ontario and the lands surrounding the Finger Lakes. The relative importance of these areas is shown by the number of trees in the regions. More than half of the peach-trees in New York are along the south shore of Lake Ontario, the total number in bearing for the region in 1909 being 1,271,514. The two counties of the State leading in number of trees are in this belt, Niagara with 591,350 and Monroe with 339,375, while of the other three in the belt there are 166,584 in Wayne, 157,934 in Orleans and 16,271 in Oswego. The Hudson River Valley district is second in importance, with a total of 679,662 trees, of which Ulster County, ranking third in the State, has 313,971, and Orange, with fourth rank, has 212,879, while Dutchess has 63,741, Columbia 51,818, Rockland 21,081 and Westchester 16,172. The Finger Lakes region, with a much smaller area of suitable land, has but 322,179 trees, of which Seneca County has 81,440, Ontario 56,495, Schuyler 51,993, Yates 48,350, Tompkins 34,090 and Livingston, a little to the west of this region proper, 19,251.
Long Island, once the seat of a considerable peach-industry, now has but 34,348 trees, 30,333 in Suffolk County and 4,015 in Nassau. There is a large area on the shore of Lake Erie suitable for peaches but land here is mainly planted with grapes; yet Chautauqua County has 32,377 and Erie 10,987 trees. Beside these main and subsidiary peach-regions there are many localities in which peaches are grown for local markets or home use. Peach statistics for the State emphasize strikingly the fact that the peach is a specialist's crop and that it can be grown only in special environments. Thus, compare the figures given for peach-growing counties with these: In two counties in New York there is not a peach-tree; in six counties there are less than twenty-five trees each; in twenty-two counties there are fewer than five hundred trees or less than five acres in any one; of the sixty-one counties in the State, only twenty-four average more than one hundred acres planted to peaches and but six have more than a thousand acres. There are still, however, acres beyond calculation, fecund for peaches, many lying fallow, upon which peaches can be grown when the markets warrant.
The acreage for the State and its peach-regions may be determined, approximately, by dividing the number of trees by 100. In 1909 there were 2,457,187 bearing trees and 2,216,907 trees not of bearing age, a total of 4,674,094 trees covering 46,740 acres in the State. At this writing, 1916, the acreage is larger. In 1909, along the Ontario Shore there were 12,715 acres planted to bearing peaches; in the Hudson Valley, 6,796; about the Finger Lakes, 3,221; on Long Island, 343; on the shores of Lake Erie, 433. These figures for districts cover bearing trees only, but holding the proportion the same for the districts as for the State, the total acreage for each district should be doubled for 1909 and, we are sure, much more than doubled for 1916. The statement that the number of bearing trees has doubled in the past five years is supported by figures furnished me by F. S. Welsh,[254] Agriculturist of the New York Central Railroad Company. The New York Central handles at least 95 per centum of the peaches grown in New York and shipped to the markets; in 1910 this railroad handled 1,341 carloads of peaches, 4,419 carloads in 1915.
New York ranks third among the states of the Union in the production of peaches, the value of the crop being but a little less than that of Georgia though only about half as much as that of California. The number of bearing trees and the yield in bushels of fruit are given in the census report of 1910 so that the average production per bearing tree in the several peach-belts of the country may be computed, throwing light on the condition of the orchards in the different regions. California leads with an average production of 37.8 quarts per tree; New York follows with 22.6 quarts; after which comes Michigan with 18.5; Pennsylvania, 13.7; New Jersey, 11.6; Ohio, 10.5; Georgia, 7.7; and Delaware, which must have had an off year in 1909, but 5 quarts.
Perhaps it is worth while putting on record an opinion as to the status of peach-growing in the State at present, 1916. The acreage is certainly the greatest yet planted in the State—as has been said nearly or quite 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 centum—for which several causes can be named; as, competition 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 luring, 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 efficient. 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.