The peaches of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Summer-pruning is not practiced in New York peach-orchards. No doubt every grower, however, as he goes about among his trees in the growing season cuts back a branch outstripping its neighbors, removes an occasional unruly member or one out of place, pinches here and rubs there, better to train his trees to the ideal he has in mind. Certainly no harm is done by such summer-pruning when the trees are strong and vigorous.

This record of pruning practices in New York cannot be closed without stating that there are growers who do not prune—not only through neglect but as a matter of principle. Chiefly, these are men more accustomed to the other tree-fruits—most of which make a fair showing without pruning—than to the peach. The peach can go a few years unpruned without becoming an abnormal orchard-specimen but left to itself to the prime of life without the reinvigorating and form-giving knife a peach-orchard becomes a woeful spectacle. The limbs crowd, choke and kill each other, except the strongest or those most fortunately placed, which push aloft, bearing at their extremities sparse-foliaged, parasol-like canopies of jaundiced foliage which furnish no protection from the blaze of the sun to the bare, bark-burned, gum-covered trunk and branches. The tree-tops are populous with dead and dying twigs and do not furnish sufficient nutriment for the normal development of fruit or tree. These unpruned peach-orchards, come to old age, are the saddest sights of the country. After the first few crops, when the flush of vigor has passed, they cannot be profitable and it would seem the sooner the axe lays them low the better for the owner. Not to prune the peach is consummate neglect.

Peaches are thinned to improve the fruit that remains, to save the vigor of the tree, and destroy insect- or disease-infected fruits. Commendable as these objects are, the practice is all too seldom observed in New York. The objections are scarcity and high cost of labor. Still the best growers always thin, doing the work soon after the summer drop which usually occurs six to eight weeks after the blossoming-time and just as the pits in the embryonic fruits begin to harden. It requires good judgment to tell at the time of thinning what will prove superfluity at the harvest. Vigor of tree, variety, fertility and moisture in the soil, the season, diseases and insects, all must be considered. The common advice is to thin the fruits so that they will not be nearer together than from four to six inches but the skillful growers adjust the size of the crop to the orchard and seasonal conditions. Thinning really begins, it should be said, in the winter when the trees are dormant and redundant branches and superfluous wood on the parts remaining are cut out. By delaying winter-pruning until danger of winter-killing is passed many growers save labor in summer-thinning, since, as early as this, fruit-prospects are fore-shadowed.

It is interesting to record that peach-orchards are never top-grafted in New York though it seems to be a matter of rather frequent practice in the South and far West. There are plenty of occasions for working over peach-trees in this State; as, when poor varieties are substituted, or in changes in fashion in peaches, or on finding a variety poorly adapted to orchard-conditions. But under any of these unfortunate circumstances in New York the axe and the grub-hoe make way for a new planting rather than trust to the skill of the grafter. Old peach-trees can, of course, be either budded over or grafted over to a new variety but we take it that a century of experience has demonstrated that changing the whole tree is better than changing the top.

HARVESTING, MARKETING AND PROFITS

The beginning of the Twentieth Century is marked as a period in which commercial affairs in agriculture are being more highly developed than ever before. Temporarily, the idea of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before is eclipsed by the idea that success in agriculture is quite as much dependent on business management as on large production. We need, then, in The Peaches of New York to set down as precisely as possible, as a record of the times, the business side of peach-growing. This we conceive, so far as the fruit-grower is concerned, consists of matters having to do with growing, picking, grading, packing, cooling and shipping, while the affairs of the several go-betweens from producer to consumer belong to merchanting rather than orcharding. Not that the grower is without interest in the selling of his products—far from it. There is no better ballast to keep the fruit-dealer steady than knowledge of all of his dealings on the part of the fruit-grower.

Among Caucasians green peaches have a bad reputation. Adage, prose and poetry bear witness that any curtailment of the sun's maturing function in this fruit is going against nature and makes an altogether unwholesome product. But in China and Japan the peach is habitually eaten green and hard. Fungi play such havoc with peaches in Oriental countries that the fruit must be devoured green or the crop is lost. A green peach is quite as palatable, nutritious and wholesome as a green olive. The ripe product of the one is just as superior to the green as is the other. All this not to point a moral or adorn a tale but to bring out the fact that the green peach is an edible fruit and that the annual performance of health inspectors in all large markets in condemning carloads of green peaches as unfit for food while green olives, apples, pears, plums, cherries and grapes pass muster, is an unjust discrimination against the peach. The peach is, of course, best when ripe, soft, melting and luscious, but so are all other fruits and all should be accorded the same treatment by consumers and health inspectors.

The peach in western countries is picked for market when it has attained full size and is passing from the hard state of the green peach to the softer mature condition. The picker tells by eye and by pressure of the peach between thumb and finger when a peach is ready for picking. White-fleshed peaches are green in color when picked but turn to greenish-white or yellowish-white as maturity proceeds; yellow-fleshed turn from yellowish-green to lemon or orange-yellow. The full flavor of the ripe peach develops only when the fruit ripens on the tree but ripe fruit cannot be shipped and peaches are therefore picked at the stage in advance of full maturity that will permit them to reach the market at maturity—one or two days in New York, six or seven in California. Peach-picking is a delicate business for it is equally disastrous to gather the crop before it is ripe enough or to delay a day or two too long.

Few picking appliances are needed for the peach in New York since the trees are trained so low most of the fruit can be picked from the ground or from a short step-ladder. The knack of peach-picking consists of tipping the fruit sidewise with a light twist which releases it from the branch without the bruise of a direct pull. The care in handling depends largely on the temperament of the picker—a coarse, careless ruffian cannot handle the tender-fleshed peach with the consideration it deserves. Women are much employed in picking peaches. Two systems of managing pickers are in vogue: They are employed by the day in charge of a competent foreman; or the picker is supplied with tickets or tally cards and is paid by the basket. The day-system is commonest and most satisfactory. When peach-picking is in full swing a man can pick 100 half-bushel baskets in a day of sorts like Elberta in which the fruits ripen at the same time, but the quantity grows smaller and smaller as the varieties decrease in size and increase in length of ripening-time. Peaches are usually graded and packed indoors, being brought under cover in special picking receptacles into which the fruit is put as it comes from the tree. Packing indoors is a comparatively modern innovation, the method a decade or two ago being to pack in the field as is occasionally done now, more especially for local markets.

Grading peaches is still a matter of local or personal practice in New York as it is the country over. No state seems yet to have regulated by law the grading of peaches, as several have done with the apple. The need is quite as great for such laws for one fruit as for the other, and no doubt grading peaches in New York will soon be regulated by the strong arm of the law as is grading apples. The essentials in good grading as now practiced are fair or large size for the variety, high and characteristic color, uniformity in size and color, freedom from bruises and insect and fungus injuries, and full and characteristic flavor for the variety. Peaches vary much in shape and pubescence depending on soil and climate—so much that through variations in these characters the identity of varieties is sometimes lost—but grading is not yet sufficiently refined to take note of either character. Good growers sort into at least three grades, counting culls.