XXVII.
PEACHES – PEARS – CHERRIES – GRAPES
Our harsh, capricious climate north of the latitudes of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis – so much severer than that of corresponding latitudes in Europe – is unfavorable, or at least very trying, to all the more delicate and luscious Fruits, berries excepted. Except on our Pacific coast, of which the Winter temperature is at least ten degrees milder than that of the Atlantic, the finer Peaches and Grapes are grown with difficulty north of the fortieth degree of latitude, save in a few specially favored localities, whereof the southern shore of Lake Erie is most noted, though part of that of Lake Ontario and of the west coast of Lake Michigan are likewise well adapted to the Peach.
It is not the mere fact that the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer sometimes ranges below zero, and the earth is deeply frozen, but the suddenness wherewith such rigor succeeds and is succeeded by a temperature above the freezing point, that proves so inhospitable to the most valued Tree-Fruits. And, as the dense forests which formerly clothed the Alleghenies and the Atlantic slope, are year by year swept away, the severity of our "cold snaps," and the celerity with which they appear and disappear, are constantly aggravated. A change of 60°, or from 50° above to 10° below zero, between morning and the following midnight, soon followed by an equally rapid return to an average November temperature, often proves fatal even to hardy forest-trees. I have had the Red Cedar in my woods killed by scores during an open, capricious Winter; and my observation indicates the warmest spots in a forest as those where trees are most likely to be thus destroyed. After an Arctic night, in which they are frozen solid, a bright sun sends its rays into the warmest nooks, whence the wind is excluded, and wholly or partially thaws out the smaller trees; which are suddenly frozen solid again so soon as the sunshine is withdrawn; and this partly explains to my mind the fact that peach-buds are often killed in lower and level portions of an orchard, while they retain their vitality on the hill-side and at its crest, not 80 rods distant from those destroyed. The fact that the colder air descends into and remains in the valleys of a rolling district contributes also to the correct explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled some observers.
Unless in a favored locality, it seems to the unadvisable for a farmer who expects to thrive mainly by the production of Grain and Cattle, to attempt the growing of the finer Fruits, except for the use of his own family. In a majority of cases, a multiplicity of cares and labors precludes his giving to his Peaches and Grapes, his Plums and Quinces, the seasonable and persistent attention which they absolutely require. Quite commonly, a farmer visits a grand nursery, sees with admiration its trees and vines loaded with the most luscious Fruits, and rashly infers that he has only to buy a good stock of like Trees and Vines to insure himself an abundance of delicious fruit. So he buys and sets; but with no such preparation of the soil, and no such care to keep it mellow and free from weeds, or to baffle and destroy predatory insects, as the nurseryman employs. Hence the utter disappointment of his hopes; borers, slugs, caterpillars, and every known or unknown species of insect enemies, prey upon his neglected favorites. At intervals, some domestic animal or animals get among them, and break down a dozen in an hour. So, the far greater number come to grief, without having had one fair chance to show what they could do, and the farmer jumps to the conclusion that the nurseryman was a swindler, and the trees he sells scarcely related to those whose abundant and excellent fruits tempted him to buy. I counsel every farmer to consider thoughtfully the treatment absolutely required for the production of the finer Fruits before he allows a nurseryman to make a bill against him, and not expect to grow Duchesse Pears as easily as Blackberries, or Ionas and Catawbas as readily as he does Fox-grapes on the willows which overhang his brook; for if he does he will surely be disappointed.
Some of our hardier and coarser Grapes – the Concord preëminent among them – are grown with considerable facility over a wide extent of our country; and many farmers, having planted them in congenial soil, and tended them well throughout their infancy, are rewarded by a bounteous product for two or three years. Believing their success assured, they imagine that their vines may henceforth be neglected, and in the course of two or three more years they are often utterly ruined. I know that there are wild grapes of some value, in the absence of better, which thrive and bear without attention; but I do not believe that any grape which will sell in a market where good fruit was ever seen, can be grown north of Philadelphia but by constant care and labor, or at a cost of less than five cents per pound, under the most judicious and skillful treatment. In California, and I presume in most of our States south of the Potomac and Ohio, choice grapes may be grown more abundantly and more cheaply. Yet I think the localities are few and far between in which a tun of good grapes can be grown as cheaply as a tun of wheat, under the most judicious cultivation in either case.
I do not mean to discourage grape-growing; on the contrary, I would have every farmer, even so far north as Vermont and Wisconsin, experiment cautiously with a dozen of the most promising varieties, including always the more hardy, in the hope of finding some one or more adapted to his soil, and capable of enduring his climate. Even in France, the land of the vine, one farm will produce a grape which the very next will not: no man can satisfactorily say why. The farmer, who has tried half a dozen grapes and failed with all, should not be deterred from further experiments, for the very next may prove a success. I would only say, Be moderate in your expectations and careful in your experiments; and never risk even $100 on a vineyard, till you have ascertained, at a cost of $5 or under, whether the species you are testing will thrive and bear on your soil.
In my own case, my upland mainly sloping to the west, with a hill rising directly south of it, I have had no luck with Grapes, and I have wasted little time or means upon them. I have done enough to show that they can be grown, even in such a locality, but not to profit or satisfaction.
I would advise the farmer who proposes to grow Pear, Peaches, and Quinces, for home use only or mainly, to select a piece of dry, gravelly or sandy loam, underdrain it thoroughly, plow or trench it very deeply, and fertilize it generously, in good part with ashes and with leaf-mold from his woods. Locate the pig-pen on one side of it, fence it strongly, and let the pigs have the run of it for a good portion of each year. In this plat or yard, plant half a dozen Cherry and as many Pear trees of choice varieties, the Bartlett foremost among them; keep clear of all dwarfs, and let your choicest trees have a chance to run under the pig-pen if they will. Plant here also, if your climate does not forbid, a dozen well-chosen Peach-trees, and two each year thereafter to replace those that will soon be dying out; and give half a dozen Quinces moist and rich locations by the side of your fences; surrounding each tree with stakes or pickets that will preclude too great familiarity on the part of the swine, and will not prevent a sharp scrutiny for borers in their season. Do not forget that a fruit-tree is like a cow tied to an immovable stake, from which you cannot continue to draw a pail of milk per day unless you carry her a liberal supply of food; and every Fall cart in half a dozen loads of muck from some convenient swamp or pond for your pigs to turn over: Should they leave any weeds, cut them with a scythe as often as they seem to need it; never allowing one to ripen seed. There may be easier and surer ways to obtain choice fruits; but this one commends itself to my judgment as not surpassed by any other. I think few have grown fruits to profit but those who make this a specialty; and I feel that disappointment in fruit-culture is by no means near the end. You can grow Plums, or Grapes, or Peaches, outside of the climate most congenial to them, but this is a work wherein success is likely to cost more than its worth. Try it first on a small scale, if you will try it; and be sure you do it thoroughly.
XXVIII.
GRAIN-GROWING – EAST AND WEST
I disclaim all pretensions to ability to teach Western farmers how to grow Indian Corn abundantly and profitably, while I cheerfully admit that they have taught me somewhat thoroughly worth knowing. In my boyhood, I hoed Corn diligently for weeks at a time, drawing the earth from between the rows up about the stalks to a depth of three or four inches; thus forming hills which the West has since taught me to be of no use, but rather a detriment, embarrassing the efforts of the growing, hungry plants to throw out their roots extensively in every direction, and subjecting them to needless injury from drouth. I am thoroughly convinced that Corn, properly planted, will, like Wheat and all other grains, root itself just deep enough in the ground, and that to keep down all weeds and leave the surface of the corn-field open, mellow and perfectly flat, is the best as well as the cheapest way to cultivate Corn. And I do not believe that so much human food, with so little labor, is produced elsewhere on earth as in the spacious fields of Wheat and Corn in our grand Mississippi valley.
And yet I have seen in that valley many ample stretches covered with Corn, whereof the tillage seemed susceptible of improvement. Riding between these great corn-fields in October, after everything standing thereon had been killed by frost, it seemed to my observation that, while the corn-crop was fair, the weed-crop was far more luxuriant; so that, if everything had been cut clean from the ground, and the corn and the weeds placed in opposite scales, the latter would have weighed down the former. I cannot doubt that the cultivation, or lack of cultivation, which produces or permits such results, is not merely slovenly, but unthrifty.
The West is for the present, as for a generation she has been, the granary of the East. In my judgment, she will not long be content to remain so. Fifty years ago, the Genesee valley supplied most of the wheat and flour imported into New-England; ten years later, Northern Ohio was our principal resource; ten years later still, Michigan, Indiana, northern Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, had been added to our grain-growing territory. Another decade, and our flour manufacturers had crossed the Mississippi, laying Iowa and Minnesota under liberal contributions, while western New-York had ceased to grow even her own breadstuffs, and Ohio to produce one bushel more than she needed for home consumption. Can we doubt that this steady recession of our Egypt, our Hungary, is destined to continue? Twenty-three years ago, when I first rode out from the then rising village of Chicago to see the Illinois prairies, nearly every wagon I met was loaded with wheat, going into Chicago, to be sold for about fifty cents per bushel, and the proceeds loaded back in the form of lumber, groceries, and almost everything else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then dotting, thinly and irregularly, that whole region with their cabins. Now, I presume the district I then traversed produces hardly more grain than it consumes; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt that she will grow her own breadstuffs after 1880; not that she will be unable to produce a large surplus, but that her farmers will have decided that they can use their lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa and Minnesota will continue to export grain for perhaps twenty years longer; but even their time will come for saying, "New-York and New-England (not to speak of Old England) are too far away to furnish profitable markets for such bulky products; the cost of transportation absorbs the larger part of the cargo. We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, Butter, Cheese, Hops, and various Manufactures, whereof the freight will range from 2 up to not more than 25 per cent. of the value." They thus save their soil from the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop after grain-crop persistently, which long ago exhausted most of New-England and eastern New-York of wheat-forming material, and has since wrought the same deplorable result in our rich Genesee valley; while eastern Pennsylvania, though settled nearly two centuries ago, having pursued a more rational and provident system of husbandry, grows excellent wheat-crops to this day.
I insist that the States this side of the Delaware; though they will draw much grain from the Canadas after the political change that cannot be far distant, will be compelled to grow a very considerable share of their own breadstuff; that the West will cease to supply them unless at prices which they will deem exorbitant; and that grain-growing eastward of a line drawn from Baltimore this north to the Lakes will have to be very considerably extended. Let us see, then, whether this might not be done with profit even now, and whether the East is not unwise in having so generally abandoned grain-growing.
I leave out of the account most of New-England, as well as of Eastern New-York, and the more rugged portions of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the rocky, hilly, swampy face of the country seems to forbid any but that patchy cultivation, wherein machinery and mechanical power can scarcely be made available, and which seem, therefore, permanently fated to persevere in a system of agriculture and horticulture not essentially unlike that they now exhibit. In the valleys of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Hudson, and of our smaller rivers, there are considerable tracts absolutely free from these natural impediments, whereon a larger and more efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable, even now; but these intervales are generally the property of many owners; are cut up by roads and fences; and are held at high prices: so that I will simply pass them by, and take for illustration the "Pine Barrens" of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing that what I say of them is equally applicable, with slight modifications, to large portions of Long Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
The "Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine deposit of several hundred feet in depth, mainly sand, with which more or less clay is generally intermingled, while there are beds and even broader stretches of this material nearly or quite pure; the clay sometimes underlying the sand at a depth of 10 to 30 or 40 inches. Vast deposits of muck or leaf-mold, often of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet in depth, are very common; so that hardly any portion of the dry or sandy land is two miles distant from one or more of them, while some is usually much nearer; and half the entire region is underlaid by at least one stratum of the famous marl (formed of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine monsters long ago extinct) which has already played so important and beneficent a part in the renovation and fertilization of large districts in Monmouth, Burlington, Salem, and other counties.
Let us suppose now that a farmer of ample means and generous capacity should purchase four hundred acres of these "barrens," with intent to produce therefrom, not sweet potatoes, melons, and the "truck" to which Southern Jersey is so largely devoted, but substantial Grain and Meat; and let us see whether the enterprise would probably pay.
Let us not stint the outlay, but, presuming the tract to be eligibly located on a railroad not too distant from some good marl-bed, estimate as follows:
I believe that this tract, divided by light fences into four fields of 100 acres each, and seeded in rotation to Corn, Wheat, Clover and other grasses, would produce fully 60 bushels of Corn and 30 of Wheat per acre, with not less than 3 tuns of good Hay; and that by cutting, steaming, and feeding the stalks and straw on the place, not pasturing, but keeping up the stock, and feeding them, as indicated in a former chapter of these essays, and selling their product in the form of Milk, Butter, Cheese and Meat, a greater profit would be realized than could be from a like investment in Iowa or Kansas. The soil is warm, readily frees itself, or is freed, from surplus water; is not addicted to weeds; may be plowed at least 200 days in a year; may be sowed or planted in the Spring, when Minnesota is yet solidly frozen; while the crop, early matured, is on hand to take advantage of any sudden advance in the European or our own seaboard markets. Labor, also, is cheaper and more rapidly procured in the neighborhood of this great focus of immigration than it is or can be in the West; and our capable farmers may take their pick of the workers thronging hither from Europe, at the moment of their landing on our shore. Of course, the owner of such an estate as I have roughly outlined, would be likely to keep a part of his purchase in timber, proving the quality thereof by cutting out the less desirable trees, trimming up the rest, and planting new ones among them; and he would be almost certain to devote some part of his farm annually to the growth of Roots, Vegetables, and Fruits. But I have aimed to show only that he would grow grain here at a profit, and I think I have succeeded. His 60 bushels of corn (shelled) per acre could be sold at his crib, one year with another, for 60 silver dollars; and he need seldom wait a month after husking it for customers who would gladly take his grain and pay the money for it. This would be just about double what the Iowa or Missouri farmer can expect to average for his Corn. The abundant fodder would also be worth in New-Jersey at least double its value in Iowa; and I judge that the farmer able to buy, prepare, fertilize, and cultivate 1,200 acres of the Jersey "barrens," could make more than thrice the profit to be realized by the owner of 400 acres. He would plow and seed as well as thrash, shell, cut stalks and straw, and prepare the food of his animals, wholly by steam-power, and would soon learn to cultivate a square mile at no greater expense than is now involved in the as perfect tillage of 200 acres.
This essay is not intended to prove that Grain is not or may not be profitably cultivated at the West, nor that it is unadvisable for Eastern farmers to migrate thither in order so to cultivate it. What I maintain is, that Wheat, Indian Corn, and nearly all our great food staples, may also be profitably produced on the seaboard, and that thousands of square miles, now nearly or quite unproductive, may be wisely and profitably devoted to such production. Let us regard, therefore, without alarm, the prospect of such a development and diversification of Western Industry as will render necessary a large and permanent extension (or rather revival) of Eastern grain-growing.
XXIX.
ESCULENT ROOTS – POTATOES
In no other form can so large an amount and value of human food be obtained from an acre of ground as in that of edible roots or tubers; and of these the Potato is by far the most acceptable, and in most general use. Our ancestors, it is settled, were destitute and ignorant of the Potato prior to the discovery of America, though Europe would now find it difficult to subsist her teeming millions without it. In travelling pretty widely over that continent, I cannot remember that I found, any considerable district in which the Potato was not cultivated, though Ireland, western England, and northern Switzerland, with a small portion of northern Italy, are impressed on my mind as the most addicted to the growth of this esculent. Other roots are eaten occasionally, by way of variety, or as giving a relish to ordinary food; but the Potato alone forms part of the every day diet alike of prince and peasant. It is an almost indispensable ingredient of the feasts of Dives, while it is the cheapest and commonest resort for satiating or moderating the hunger of Lazarus. I recollect hearing my parents, fifty years ago, relate how, in their childhood and youth, the poor of New-England, when the grain-crop of that region was cut short, as it often was, were obliged to subsist through the following Winter mainly on Potatoes and Milk; and I then accorded to those unfortunates of the preceding generation a sympathy which I should now considerably abate, provided the Potatoes were of good quality. Roasted Potatoes, seasoned with salt and butter and washed down with bounteous draughts of fresh buttermilk, used in those days to be the regular supper served up in farmers' homes after a churning of cream into butter; and I have since eaten costly suppers that were not half so good.
The Potato, say some accredited accounts, was first brought to Europe from Virginia, by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 or 1587; but I do not believe the story. Authentic tradition affirms that the Potato was utterly unknown in New-England, or at all events east of the Connecticut, when the Scotch-Irish who first settled Londonderry, N. H., came over from old Londonderry, Ireland, bringing the Potato with them. They spent the Winter of 1719 in different parts of Massachusetts and Maine – quite a number of them at Haverhill, Mass., where they gave away a few Potatoes for seed, on leaving for their own chosen location in the Spring; and they afterward learned that the English colonists, who received them, tried hard to find or make the seed-balls edible the next Fall but were obliged to give it up as a bad job; leaving the tubers untouched and unsuspected in the ground.
I doubt that the Potato was found growing by Europeans in any part of this country, unless it be in that we have acquired from Mexico. It is essentially a child of the mountains, and I presume it grew wild nowhere else than on the sides of the great chain which traversed Spanish America, at a height of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the surface of the ocean. Here it found a climate cooled by the elevation and moistened by melting snows from above and by frequent showers, yet one which seldom allowed the ground to be frozen to any considerable depth, while the pure and bracing atmosphere was congenial to its nature and requirements. In this country, the Potato is hardiest and thriftiest among the White Mountains of New-Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Vermont, on the Catskills and kindred elevations in our own State, and in similar regions of Pennsylvania and the States further South and West.
My own place is at least 15 miles from, and 500 feet above, Long Island Sound; yet I cannot make the Potato, by the most generous treatment, so prolific as it was in New-Hampshire in my boyhood, where I dug a bushel from 14 hills, grown on rough, hard ground, but which, having just been cleared of a thick growth of bushes and briars, was probably better adapted to this crop than though it had been covered an inch deep with barn-yard manure.
He who has a tolerably dry, warm sandy soil, covered two or three inches deep with decayed or decaying leaves and brush, may count with confidence on raising from it a good crop of Potatoes, provided his seed be sound and healthy. On the other hand, all authorities agree that animal manures, unless very thoroughly rotted and intimately mixed with the soil, are injurious to the quality of Potatoes grown thereon, stimulating any tendency to disease, if they do not originally produce such disease. I believe that Swamp Muck, dug in Summer or Autumn, deposited on a dry bank or glade, and cured of its acidity by an admixture of Wood-Ashes, of Lime, or of Salt (better still, of Lime and Salt chemically compounded by dissolving the Salt in the least possible quantity of Water, and slaking the lime with that Water), forms an excellent fertilizer for Potatoes, if administered with a liberal hand. A bushel of either of these alkalies to a cord of muck is too little; the dose should be doubled if possible; but, if the quantity be small, mix it more carefully, and give it all the time you can wherein to operate upon the muck before applying the mixture to your fields.
Where the muck is not easily to be had, yet the soil is thin and poor, I would place considerable reliance on deep plowing and subsoiling in the Fall, and cross-plowing just before planting in the Spring. Give a good dressing of Plaster, not less than 200 lbs. to the acre, directly after the Fall plowing; if you have Ashes, scatter them liberally in the drill or hill as you plant; and, if you have them not, supply their place with Super-phosphate or Bone-dust. I think many farmers will be agreeably surprised by the additional yield which will accrue from this treatment of their soil.
Those who have no swamp muck, and feel that they can afford the outlay, may, by plowing or subsoiling early in the Fall, seeding heavily with rye, and turning this under when the time comes for planting in the Spring, improve both crop and soil materially. But even to these I would say: Apply the Gypsum in the Fall, and the Ashes or Lime and Salt mixture in the Spring; and now, with good seed and good luck, you will be reasonably sure of a bounteous harvest. If a farmer, having a poor worn-out field of sandy loam, wants to do his very best by it, let him plow, subsoil, sow rye and plaster in the Fall, as above indicated, turn this under, and sow buckwheat late in the next Spring; plow this under in turn when it has attained its growth, and sow to clover; turn this down the following Spring, and Plant to late potatoes, and he will not merely obtain a large crop, but have his land in admirable condition for whatever way follow.
I am quite well aware that such an outlay of labor and seed, with an entire loss of crop for one season, will seem to many too costly. I do not advise it except under peculiar circumstances; and yet I am confident that there are many fields that would be doubled in value by such treatment, which would richly repay all its cost. That most farmers could not afford thus to treat their entire farms at once, is very true; yet it does not follow that they might not deal with field after field thus thoroughly, living on the products of 40 or 50 acres, while they devoted five or six annually to the work of thorough renovation.
A quarter of a century ago, we were threatened with a complete extinction of the Potato, as an article of food: the stalks, when approaching or just attaining maturity, were suddenly smitten with fatal disease – usually, after a warm rain followed by scalding sunshine – the growing tubers were speedily affected; they rotted in the ground, and they rotted nearly as badly if dug; and whole townships could hardly show a bushel of sound Potatoes.
A desolating famine in Ireland, which swept away or drove into exile nearly two millions of her people, was the most striking and memorable result of this wide-spread disaster. For several succeeding seasons, the Potato was similarly, though not so extensively, affected; and the fears widely expressed that the day of its usefulness was over, seemed to have ample justification. Speaking generally, the Potato has never since been so hardy or prolific as it was half a century ago; it has gradually recovered, however, from its low estate, and, though the malady still lingers, and from time to time renews its ravages in different localities, the farmer now plants judiciously and on fit ground, with a reasonable hope that his labor will be duly rewarded.
It seems to be generally agreed that clayey soils are not adapted to its growth; that, if the quantity of the crop be not stinted, its quality is pretty sure to be inferior; and I can personally testify that the planting of Potatoes on wet soil – that is, on swampy or spongy land which has not been thoroughly drained and sweetened – is a hopeless, thriftless labor – that the crop will seldom be worth the seed.
As to the ten or a dozen different insects to which the Potato-rot has been attributed, I regard them all as consequences, not causes; attracted to prey on the plant by its sickly, weakly condition, and not really responsible for that condition. If any care for my reasons, let him refer to what I have said of the Wheat-plant and its insect enemies.1
There has been much discussion as to the kind of seed to be planted; and I think the result has been a pretty general conviction that it is better to cut the tuber into pieces having two or three eyes each, than to plant it whole, since the whole Potato sends up a superfluity of stalks, with a like effect on the crop to that of putting six or eight kernels of corn in each hill.
Small Potatoes are immature, unripe, and of course should never be planted, since their progeny will be feeble and sickly. Select for seed none but thoroughly ripe Potatoes, and the larger the better.
My own judgment favors planting in drills rather than hills, with ample space for working between them; not less than 30 inches: the seed being dropped about 6 inches apart in the drill. The soil must be deep and mellow, for the Potato suffers from drouth much sooner than Indian Corn or almost any other crop usually grown among us. I believe in covering the seed from 2 to 2-1/2 inches; and I hold to flat or level culture for this as for everything else. Planting on a ridge made by turning two furrows together may be advisable where the land is wet; but then wet land never can be made fit for cultivation, except by underdraining. And I insist upon setting the rows or drills well apart, because I hold that the soil should often be loosened and stirred to a good depth with the subsoil plow; and that this process should be persevered in till the plant is in blossom. Hardly any plant will pay better for persistent cultivation than the Potato.