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.
CLIMATE
When are plant and climate truly congenial? Perhaps the best test is the degree to which the plant spontaneously accommodates itself to all climatic conditions. Thus, the peach is ideally suited to climates in which it maintains itself without the aid of man. The peach is perfectly at home, then, in America only where it runs wild,—in parts of the South. In the North, East and the far West, peaches seldom grow spontaneously; and the cold of winter, the frosts of spring and the drouths of summer, in these regions, yearly remind us that notwithstanding the generations the tree has been grown in America it is still a stranger in a foreign country—an exotic from warm and sunlit Mid-Asia. Yet with a little help from man the peach takes kindly to many climates in which it does not grow spontaneously. Under what climatic conditions does the peach grow spontaneously? And under what climatic conditions can the peach be grown with the aid of man as a commercial success? These questions can be best answered by discussing the two constituents of climate, temperature and rainfall, in relation to the peach.
Of the several phases of temperature only extremes in cold are determinants in peach-growing in New York. The peach stands for all that is tender and effeminate in a fruit-tree and fares so ill in winter's cold that the limits of peach-culture are set in all northern states by the winter climate. The undomesticated peach is at the mercy of the winter wherever the temperature falls below zero and seldom grows spontaneously where the mercury drops even to this point. By selecting hardy varieties and following careful cultural methods, however, peaches may be grown profitably in climates where it is occasionally as cold as ten degrees below zero. An isothermal line passing through points in New York where the thermometer marks -10° in an occasional winter sets the limits of peach-growing in New York. The red line in the accompanying map shows the territory in which peach-growing is reasonably safe in New York while the green line shows the outside limits of the industry as determined by cold.
Even in the favored peach-regions of New York, winter-injury is a matter of vital importance to the peach-industry and growers seek means to avoid or check it. The problem is not an insurmountable one, for here and there are orchards and varieties which suffer little injury though possibly adjoining others in which trees or buds are wholly or partially killed. There must be reasons for the injury in the one and not in the other. These, the New York Agricultural Experiment Station made an attempt to discover a few years ago in letters addressed to the peach-growers of the State.[255] From the information received, and that gained by observation, we may lay down the following propositions regarding hardiness of the peach in New York.