The Peento, which gives name to this group, is without doubt a descendant of the flat peaches of China, common enough as we have seen. The first tree, however, came from Java to England where it was first grown by John Braddick under the name Java peach.[206] William Prince,[207] Flushing, Long Island, imported the variety to America some time previous to 1828 and grew it to the number of twenty trees. The peaches from Prince's importation seem to have been lost and the variety did not appear again in America until 1869 when P. J. Berckmans,[208] Augusta, Georgia, brought seed from China, from one of which came the Peento. Peento peaches in America are peculiar to Florida, where all of the score or more varieties but the Peento have originated. This group of peaches has been well described by H. Harold Hume in Bulletin 62 of the Florida Experiment Station from which the description given above is an adaptation.
PEACH-PRODUCTS
The magnitude of the peach-industry in the United States is better appreciated if figures showing values are given. The value of peaches and nectarines in 1909, for the United States, was $28,781,078, an amount surpassed by only one other fruit, the apple. The highest value for a geographical division is reported for the East North-Central States, the amount being $5,173,000, followed by the South Atlantic States with $4,888,000 and the Pacific States with $4,887,000. Of individual states, California with her enormous area, over most of which the peach thrives, ranks first, the value of the crop in 1909 reaching $4,574,000; the next most important State is Georgia, $2,183,000; the third, New York, $2,014,000; these followed in order of value by Michigan, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina, each with a crop of more than $1,000,000 in value.
The peach has greater commercial value in the United States than all other stone-fruits combined, the value of the crop in 1909, as we have seen, amounting to $28,781,078 while the value of the plum was $10,299,495; of the cherry, $7,231,160; of the apricot, $2,884,119; of the almond, $712,000. The consumption of peaches is increasing year by year. Until recently the peach has been considered a fruit of luxury, but large plantations, good care, quick and safe transportation and wide distribution now provide peaches for all who can afford to eat fruit.
The profits of peach-growing are occasionally so enormous that the publication of the figures is usually followed by excessive planting, with consequent over-production and low prices, followed, in turn, by scarcity and high prices. So, too, the peach is more at the mercy of the seasons than any other standard tree-fruit and winter freezes and spring frosts ruin crops in some part of the country every year and often such disasters are widespread. These ups and downs, however, instead of decreasing, seem to stimulate the peach-trade, probably, on the part of the grower, because gambling is a universal vice; on the part of the consumer, because he better appreciates peaches when the blessing is occasionally withdrawn.
The chosen use for any choice fruit is to eat it as it comes from the tree or as prepared fresh fruit for dessert. So the peach is chiefly used the world over. Refreshing and delectable as any other fruit, it has another quality, appreciated by those who sell as well as by those who consume—it does not cloy the appetite. The insatiable longing of the great lexicographer, Johnson, for peaches is common to all lovers of this fruit. Boswell, Johnson's biographer, gives this gustatory reminiscence of his famous patron: "He would eat seven or eight large peaches of a morning before breakfast began, and treated them with proportionate attention after dinner again, yet I have heard him protest that he never had quite as much as he wished, except once, in his life." In America the greater part of the crop is, no doubt, eaten out of hand but peach-pie and peaches and cream, and peach-butter are national dishes, while marmalades, jellies, pickles, preserves and sauces are as common to this fruit as to any other. Besides the innumerable cooked products, several refreshing domestic drinks are made from the juice of peaches, as shrub and peach-wine, or it may be frozen into sherbet or ice cream. Waste peaches are used with more or less success as stock for vinegar. Peaches are canned and evaporated in the United States on an enormous scale, nearly one-half the crop being so utilized.
Canned peaches.—Canning is conservation in excelsis. It is modern compliance to the command, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." Without this method of preserving crops the commercial culture of fruits and vegetables as carried on nowadays would be ruined and no fruit would suffer as would the peach, since it leads all others in quantity and value of the canned pack. The value of canned peaches in the United States in 1909 was $3,753,698 or nearly one-seventh the total value of the crop and one may roughly estimate the fruit canned at home to be half as much as that canned in the factories. The product was put up in states, named in order of value of the pack as follows: California, $3,013,203; Michigan, $175,386; Maryland, $158,839; Georgia, $156,282; New York, $141,142. These canned peaches go to every part of the world to which they can be cheaply carried and are fit for consumption any time within two or three years after being put up. The canning factory has revolutionized the peach-industry in the United States by giving its products access to the world-market.
Commercial canning is a specialist's business into which we cannot go. The processes, essentially, are the same as those used in domestic canning and consist in destroying all bacteria by heat and then hermetically sealing the product in cans. In canning factories the work is nearly all done by machinery, including peeling, pitting and cutting the fruit, soldering the cans and putting on labels. To purchase proper machinery, hire labor and manage both to secure uniformity and cheapness in the product requires large capital and keen business ability. Peaches are easy to handle in factories and the work can be done so cheaply and the product is so acceptable that the factory-canned fruit is rapidly taking the place of that which a quarter of a century ago was almost wholly put up in the kitchen. The canning industry originated, has been perfected and is now chiefly carried on in the United States and Canada, though rapidly being introduced elsewhere. The aid afforded the peach-grower in this country by the canneries has been a great stimulus and makes the possibilities of profitable production of this fruit in the future certain.
Orchard-canning on a small scale seldom proves feasible, succeeding best, if at all, in a home industry to provide a special product for a fancy or private trade. Occasionally, associations can command capital enough to compete with the large business enterprises but as a rule the peach-grower's interests are served best by the production of acceptable fruit for those who are engaged in the canning industry.
In the East, New York for example, all surplus peaches of standard varieties go to the cannery, though certain sorts have preference, but on the Pacific Coast where peaches are grown for canning, the trade demands a special type. The choice of varieties differs in different localities so that a prescription of sorts to grow for the canning trade cannot be made. Canners accept only yellow-fleshed peaches and usually prefer clingstones since these stand up better in the can. This preference is well shown in figures from California, where in 1913 only 583,800 cases, 24 cans to the case, of freestones were canned as against 1,630,255 cases of clingstones. Fashion now demands varieties red at the pit. Most cans in the great pack coming from California are labeled "Lemon Cling," but this is really now but a trade name, the old Lemon Cling, the pioneer sort in the canning trade, being little grown, a dozen or more similar but improved peaches having taken its place. The nectarine is canned in California but is not yet popular with consumers despite the fact that the product is most appetizing and very pleasing in appearance. Its smooth skin makes it one of the easiest of all fruits to can.