XXIV.
FRUIT-TREES – THE APPLE
If I were asked to say what single aspect of our economic condition most strikingly and favorably distinguished the people of our Northern States from these of most if not all other countries which I have traversed, I would point at once to the fruit-trees which so generally diversify every little as well as larger farm throughout these States, and are quite commonly found even on the petty holdings of the poorer mechanics and workmen in every village and in the suburbs and outskirts of every city. I can recall nothing like it abroad, save in two or three of the least mountainous and most fertile districts of northern Switzerland. Italy has some approach to it in the venerable olive-trees which surround or flank many, perhaps most, of her farm-houses, upholding grape-vines as ancient and nearly as large as themselves; but the average New-England or Middle State homestead, with its ample Apple-orchard and its cluster of Pear, Cherry and Plum-trees surrounding its house and dotting or belting its garden, has an air of comfort and modest thrift, which I have nowhere else seen fairly equaled. Upland Virginia and the mountainous portion of the States southward of her may in time surpass the most favored regions of the North in the abundance, variety and excellence of their fruits; for the Peach and the Grape find here a congenial climate, while they are grown with difficulty, where they can be grown at all, in the North; but, up to this hour, I judge that our country north of the Potomac is better supplied with wholesome and palatable tree-fruits than any other portion of the earth's surface of equal or nearly equal area.
On the whole, I deem it a misfortune that our Northern States were so admirably adapted to the Apple and kindred fruit-trees that our pioneer forefathers had little more to do than bury the seeds in the ground and wait a few years for the resulting fruit. The soil, formed of decayed trees and their foliage, thickly covered with the ashes of the primitive forest, was as genial as soil could be; while the remaining woods, which still covered seven-eighths of the country, shut out or softened the cold winds of Winter and Spring, rendering it less difficult, a century ago, to grow fine peaches in southern New-Hampshire than it now is in southern New-York. Devastating insects were precluded by those great, dense woods from diffusing themselves from orchard to orchard as they now do. Snows fell more heavily and lay longer then than now, protecting the roots from heavy frosts, and keeping back buds and blossoms in Spring, to the signal advantage of the husbandman. I estimate that my apple-trees would bear at least one-third more fruit if I could retard their blossoming a fortnight, so as to avoid the cold rains and cutting winds, often succeeded by frosts, which are apt to pay their unwelcome farewell visits just when my trees are in bloom or when the fruit is forming directly thereafter. Hence, I say to every one who shall hereafter set an orchard, Give it the northward slope of a hill if that be possible. Other things being equal, the orchard which blossoms latest will, in a series of years, yield most fruit, and will be most likely to bear when the Apple-crop of your vicinity proves a failure. I do not recommend storing ice to plant or bury under the trees in April, for that involves too much labor and expense; yet I have no doubt that even that has been and sometimes might be done with profit. In the average, however, I judge that it would not pay.
In locating and setting an orchard, the very first consideration is thorough drainage. Nothing short of a destructive fire can be more injurious to an apple-tree than compelling it to stand throughout Winter and Spring in sour, stagnant water. Barrenness, dead branches, and premature general decay, are the natural and righteous consequences of such crying abuse. There are many reasons for choosing sloping or broken ground for an apple-orchard, whereof comparative exemption from frost and natural facility of drainage are the most obvious. A level field, thoroughly undrained to-day, may, through neglect and the mischiefs wrought by burrowing animals, have become little better than a morass thirty years hence; but an orchard set on a tolerably steep hillside is reasonably secure against wet feet to the close of its natural life.
A gravelly or sandy loam is generally preferred for orchards; yet I have known them to flourish and bear generously on heavy clay. Whoever has a gravelly field will wisely prefer this for Apples, not merely to clay but to sand as well.
And, while many young orchards have doubtless been injured by immoderate applications of rank, green manures, I doubt that any man has ever yet bestowed too much care and expense on the preparation of his ground for fruit-trees. Where ridges or plateaus of fast stone do not forbid, I would say, Turn over the soil to a depth of at least fifteen inches with a large plow and a strong team; then lift and pulverize the subsoil to a depth of not less than nine inches; apply all the Wood-ashes you can get, with one thousand bushels of Marl if you are in a Marl region; if not, use instead from thirty to fifty bushels of quick Lime (oyster-shell if that is to be had) with one hundred loads per acre of Swamp Muck which has lain a year on dry upland, baking in the sun and wind; and now you may think of setting your trees. If your soil was rich Western prairie or Middle-State garden to begin with, you can dispense with all these fertilizers; yet I doubt that there is an acre of Western prairie that would not be improved by the Lime or (perhaps better still) a smaller quantity of refuse Salt from a packing-house or meat retailing grocery. There are not many farms that would not repay the application of five bushels per acre of refuse Salt at twenty-five cents per bushel.
Your trees once set – (and he who sets twenty trees per day as they should be set, with each root in its natural position, and the earth pressed firmly around its trunk, but no higher than as it originally grew, is a faithful, efficient worker), I would cultivate the land, (for the trees' sake), growing crops successively of Ruta Bagas, Carrots, Beets, and early Potatoes, but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, disturbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and guarding their trunks from tug, or trace, or whiffle-tree, by three stakes set firmly in the ground about each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant cultivation with the hoe inside as well as outside of the stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Apply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field in quantity sufficient fully to counterbalance the annual abstraction by your crops. Make it a law inflexible and relentless that no animal shall be let into this orchard to forage, or for any purpose whatever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to draw away the crops. Thus until the first blossoms begin to appear on the trees; then lay down to grass
without
grain, unless it be a crop of Rye or Oats to be cut and carried off for feed when not more than half grown, leaving the ground to the young grass. Let the grass be mowed for the next two or three years, and thenceforward devote it to the pasturage of Swine, running over it with a scythe once or twice each Summer to clear it of weeds, and taking out the Swine a few days before beginning to gather the Apples, but putting them back again the day after the harvest is completed. Let the Swine be sufficiently numerous and hungry to eat every apple that falls within a few hours after it is dropped, and to insure their rooting out every grub or worm that burrows in the earth beneath the trees, ready to spring up and apply himself to mischief at the very season when you could best excuse his absence. I do not commend this as all, or nearly all, that should be done in resistance to the pest of insect ravage; but I begin with the Hog as the orchardist's readiest, cheapest, most effective ally or servitor in the warfare he is doomed unceasingly to wage against the spoilers of his heritage. I will indicate some further defensive enginery in my next chapter.
XXV.
MORE ABOUT APPLE-TREES
In my opinion, Apple-trees, in most orchards, are planted too far apart and allowed to grow taller and spread their limbs more widely than is profitable. I judge that a pruner or picker should be able to reach the topmost twig of any tree with a ten-foot pole, and that no limb should be allowed to extend more than eight feet from the trunk whence it springs. Our Autumnal Equinox occurs before our Apples are generally ripe for harvest, and, finding our best trees bending under a heavy burden of fruit, its fierce gales are apt to make bad work with trees as well as apples. The best tree I had, with several others, was thus ruined by an equinoctial tempest a few years since. Barren trees escape unharmed, while those heavily laden with large fruit are wrenched and twisted into fragments. And, even apart from this peril, a hundred weight of fruit at or near the extremity of limbs which extend ten or twelve feet horizontally from the trunk, tax and strain a tree more than four times that weight growing within four or five feet of the trunk, and on limbs that maintain a semi-erect position. I diffidently suggest, therefore, that no apple-tree be allowed to exceed fifteen feet in height, nor to send a limb more than eight feet from its trunk, and that trees be set (diamond-fashion) twenty-four feet apart each way, instead of thirty-two, as some of mine were. I judge that the larger number of trees (72 per acre) will produce more fruit in the average than the larger but fewer trees grown on squares of two by two rods to each, that they will thrive and bear longer, and that not one will be destroyed or seriously harmed by winds where a dozen would if allowed to grow as high and spread as far as they could.
Every apple-tree should be pruned each year of its life: that is, it should be carefully examined with intent to prune if that be found necessary. It should be pruned with a careful eye to giving it the proper shape, which, from the point where it first forks upward, should be that of a tea-cup, very nearly. I have seen young trees so malformed that they could rarely, if ever, bear fruit enough to render them profitable. And the pruning should be so carefully, judiciously done from the outset that no wood two years old should ever be cut away. With old, malformed, diseased, worm-eaten, decaying trees, the best must be done that can be; but he who, pruning a tree that he set and has hitherto cared for, finds himself obliged to cut off a limb thicker than his thumb, may justly suspect himself of lacking a mastery of the art of fruit-growing.
Sprouts from the root of an apple-tree remind me of children who habitually play truant or are kept out of school. They not merely can never come to good, but they are a nuisance to the neighborhood and bring reproach on the community.
The apple-grower should never forget that every producer needs to be fed in proportion to his product. If a cow gives twenty quarts of milk per day, she needs more grass or other food than if she gave but two quarts; and an acre of orchard that yields a hundred barrels of Apples per annum needs something given to the soil to balance the draft made upon it. Nature offers us good bargains; but she does not trust and will not be cheated. When she offers a bushel of Corn for a bushel of dirty Salt, Shell Lime, or Wood-Ashes, a load of Hay for a load of Muck, we ought not to stint the measure, but pay her demand ungrudgingly.
And now a last word on Insects.
My township (Newcastle) is said to have formerly grown more Apples per annum than any other township in the United States; its apple-trees are still as numerous as ever, but their product has fallen off deplorably. I estimate the average yield of the last three years at less than a bushel per annum for each full-grown tree; I think a majority of the trees have not borne a bushel each in all these three years. Unseasonable frosts, storms, etc., have borne the blame of this barrenness – perhaps justly, if we consider only immediate causes – but the caterpillar and other vermin are, in my view, our more potent, though remoter, afflictions. Not less than four times within the last sixteen years have our trees been covered with nests and worms; and I have seen whole orchards stripped of nearly every leaf till they were as bare (of every thing but caterpillars) in July as they should have been in December. After the scourge had passed, the trees reclad themselves with leaves; but they grew old under that visitation faster in one year than they would have done in ten of healthful fruit-bearing; and they are now prematurely gray and moss-covered because of the terrible infliction.
I lay down the general proposition that no man who harbors caterpillars has any moral right to Apples – that each grower should be required to make his choice between them. Slovenly farmers say, "O there are so many of them that I cannot kill half so fast as they multiply." Then I say, cut down and burn up the trees you can best spare, until you have no more left than you can keep clear of worms.
If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man fights them with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He thus pays and repays the penalty of others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demoralized, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth repels the enemy from a few favorite trees around his dwelling, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds that would help us to make head against our insect foes are slaughtered by reckless boys – many of them big enough to know better – and our perils and losses from enemies who would be contemptible if their numbers did not render them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this; and the first requisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive toward their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and shielded by the ruthless massacre of our feathered friends.
Since the foregoing was written we have had (in 1870) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our section that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider-apples to the vinegar-makers, even at fitly cents per barrel. This establishes the continued capacity of our region to bear Apples, and should invite to the planting of new orchards and the fertilization and renovation of old ones.
XXVI.
HAY AND HAY-MAKING
The Grass-crop of this, as of many, if not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most important of its annual products; requiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnishing the principal food of its Cattle, and thus contributing essentially to the subsistence of its working animals and to the production of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing proportion of the food of every civilized people. But I propose to speak in this essay of that proportion of the Grass-crop – say 25 to 35 per cent. of the whole – which is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frost and snow have divested the earth of herbage or rendered it inaccessible.
The Seventh Census (1850) returned the Hay-crop of the preceding year at 13,838,642 tuns, which the Eighth Census increased to 19,129,128 tuns as the product of 1859. Confident that most farmers underestimate their Hay-crops, and that hundreds of thousands who do not consider themselves farmers, but who own or rent little homesteads of two to ten acres each, keeping thereon a cow or two and often a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns of Hay they annually produce, considering them too trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our States and Territories for the current year at 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to each inhabitant, although I do not expect the new Census to place it much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, making its aggregate value, at my estimate of its amount, $400,000,000 – and the quantity is constantly and rapidly increasing.
That quantity should be larger from the area devoted to meadows, and the quality a great deal better. I estimate that 30,000,000 acres are annually mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving an average yield of 1-1/3 tuns per acre, while the average should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. My upland has a gravelly, rocky soil, not natural to grass, and had been pastured to death for at least a century before I bought it; yet it has yielded me an average of not less than 2-1/2 tuns to the acre for the last sixteen years, and will not yield less while I am allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when I bought it) is bound henceforth to yield more; but, while imperfectly or not at all drained, it was of course a poor reliance – yielding bounteously in spots, in others, little or nothing.
In nothing else is shiftless, slovenly farming so apt to betray itself as in the culture of Grass and the management of grass lands. Pastures overgrown with bushes and chequered by quaking, miry bogs; meadows foul with every weed, from white daisy up to the rankest brakes, with hill-sides that may once have been productive, but from which crop after crop has been taken and nothing returned to them, until their yield has shrunk to half or three-fourths of a tun of poor hay, these are the average indications of a farm nearly run out by the poorest sort of farming. Such farms were common in the New England of my boyhood; I trust they are less so to-day; yet I seldom travel ten miles in any region north or east of the Delaware without seeing one or more of them.
Fifty years ago, I judge that the greater part of the hay made in New-England was cut from sour, boggy land, that was devoted to grass simply because nothing else could be done with it. I have helped to carry the crop off on poles from considerable tracts on which oxen could not venture without miring. It were superfluous to add that no well-bred animal would eat such stuff, unless the choice were between it and absolute starvation. In many cases, a very little work done in opening the rudest surface-drains would have transformed these bogs into decent meadows, and the product, by the help of plowing or seeding, into unexceptionable hay.
There are not many farmers, apart from our wise and skillful dairymen, who use half enough grass-seed; men otherwise thrifty often fail in this respect. If half our ordinary farmers would thoroughly seed down a full third of the area they usually cultivate, and devote to the residue the time and efforts they now give to the whole, they would grow more grain and vegetables, while the additional grass would be so much clear again.
We sow almost exclusively Timothy and Clover, when there are at least 20 different grasses required by our great diversity of soils, and of these three or four might often be sown together with profit; especially in seeding down fields intended for pasture, we might advantageously use a greater vari