In such a climate as has been described Egypt offers every inducement
for the planting of fruit trees that are likely to flourish under its
ardent sun. Attempts have been made, and with fair success, but the
raising of fruit has not reached that state of excellence warranted by
fertility and the conditions of the climate. Examination very soon
shows the reasons for this lack of prosperity, which is clearly the
fault of the Egyptian gardener in his want of system, his easy, careless
indifference, and his clinging to the old-fashioned way of planting a
fruit tree, namely, placing it in a hole in the ground and leaving it to
itself.
The first things that strike observers in visiting Egyptian gardens are
the overcrowding of the trees, the neglect of precautions to keep them
free from weeds, and in many cases the marked absence of pruning dealt
out judiciously by one who knows a fruit tree and its needs--plenty of
light and air, the removal of cross growth, and the fostering of bearing
wood, here frequently injured by rank growth.
Then, again, the Egyptian gardener is as obstinate and conservative as
his prototype in the western counties of England, who leaves his ancient
apple-trees of the orchard to grow one into the other and become covered
with grey lichen, while he religiously avoids the replacing of old and
unprofitable trees by young ones.
The result of experience is--and the knowledge of what the land will do
makes it certain--that in the following out of this defective system may
be traced the want of quality, flavour, and quantity of some Egyptian
fruits.
Of these it must be remembered that the settler and commencer of their
cultivation would have to deal with several that are new to him in the
way of growing, as well as those of the cooler parts of Europe.
Egypt suggests to the reader the ancient civilisation, with its
pyramids, temples, and other monuments of its old-time grandeur, the
great river, and, above all, the desert; but to come back from these to
the simple and ordinary pursuit of gardening, the settler would be able
to surround himself, as in California and Florida, but without the
bitter disappointments produced by frosts, with several varieties of the
golden apples of the Hesperides--oranges, to wit--the sweet, the bitter,
the deeply tinted blood orange, and the mandarin. All of them grow well
in Lower Egypt, and produce beautiful and profitable crops of fruit, as
may be judged by the following. The sweet and mandarin trees will bear,
upon a good average tree, from three hundred to four hundred oranges
each--that is to say, good, sweet, juicy fruit, and these will sell
readily wholesale at about two shillings per hundred; while, in the way
of drawbacks for one who expects to make an income from his sales, it
will be found here that, just as at home, the tree that in one season
bears an exceptionally heavy crop is rather shy in its production in the
next.
The words that follow deserve to be written in italics for the benefit
of those who know the ravages and foulness that come upon an orange tree
in company with the varieties of scale. There are no insect pests,
neither, as has been intimated, are there frosts to destroy the bloom.
_. propos_ of this bloom, there is a practice pursued in Egypt which may
seem strange to an English gardener, but which adds largely to the
profits of the orange grower, and is doubtless beneficial to the tree,
relieving it as it may from the strain of overbearing. When the bitter
orange is in full flower the trees are shaken, and more than half of the
blossoms are sold for the purpose of distillation. The essence produced
is used for mixing with drinking water, or for flavouring beverages,
while the price received for the petals is about two-pence-halfpenny per
pound.
In addition to the oranges, which are in season from November until
March, and keep fruiting in beautiful repetition, lemons of several
varieties are grown, and are marketable at the same time of year. These
are a most popular fruit among the Egyptians, largely utilised as a kind
of seasoning in the preparation of cooked dishes, and also much prized
for the making of summer beverages in this hot and thirsty land. These
are even better friends to the gardener growing for the market than
oranges, for they are sure croppers, and command a good price.
Abundance may be written with regard to summer fruits, the list
numbering apricots, pears, plums, peaches, apples, grapes, figs, the
custard apple, pomegranate, melon, and banana. Of these, bananas,
apricots, pomegranates, and figs may be classed as the most profitable
fruits of the summer season. But people accustomed to the English
Moorpark and _Gros Peche_ apricot, which, when well-grown upon a south
wall or in an orchard-house, is one rich bag of reddish amber,
deliciously flavoured honey-like juice, would be much disappointed in
the abundant apricots which are produced upon standard trees for the
Egyptian market. They are finely flavoured, but small, hard, and
fibrous; and an experienced cultivator of fruit trees states that it is
very probable that the deficiency in quality and the reason that so far
it has not thrived to perfection is, paradoxical as it may sound, that
it matures too quickly, which is another way of saying that the climate
is too fine for it. Still, there is every reason to believe that
skilful management and choice acclimatisation, or the raising of new
sorts, may result in the production of finer apricots than those now
grown in England, where in some parts a manifest deterioration has been
in progress, so great that growers are destroying their apricots and
replacing them with fruit trees more suited to our sunless climate.
Some years back a novelty made its appearance in the Alexandria
district. This was a veritable plague of Egypt, though undoubtedly a
visitant from abroad. It was a banana disease, which in its inroads
played great havoc amongst the plantations. Scientific examination was
brought to bear, and the cause was found to be a parasitic nematode
which attacked the roots of the plant.
Fortunately the trouble was local, and the infection limited in its
area, while at the present time many of the plantations are free from
the pest.
With regard to peaches, the way is open to the enterprising and clever
cultivator, for with such a constant supply of sunshine much ought to be
done in the way of growing this queen of fruits. Many of us here in
England, who have to trust to trees laboriously trained against a wall,
or spread out and tied in to wires at the cost of many a back and neck
ache, beneath the sloping glass of an orchard-house, have read with
watering mouths of the standard trees of the United States, where the
fallen peaches are gathered up in barrowfuls and considered of no
account.
Abundance rules there, and possibly it may be that this is due to the
intensely hot summers of the States and their frigidly cold winters; for
this seems to be the nature of the climate in the country from which the
peach sprang and took its Latin name, _Persica_; for there, following
upon the summer heats, winter comes down from the mountains intensely
cold.
This balance is wanting in Egypt, where, so far, peaches have not proved
to be a success. The trees grow well and bear fruit that is fairly
large in size, but does not possess the fine aromatic, juicy flavour of
a well-matured English peach grown upon a wall and only protected during
the time of frost, those raised under glass, save in size and
appearance, never approaching the open-air fruit.
The Egyptian peaches are hard and fibrous, as well as wanting in the
piquant bitter almond flavour so much esteemed. Possibly the selection
of better kinds may make a great change in the hands of careful
cultivators, but in common fairness it is right to say that the
successful production of this favourite fruit in Egypt is open to doubt.
So far, too, another stone fruit, the plum, is not extensively grown,
while the plums produced in the Egyptian garden cannot compare with
those imported from Europe. But this fruit is not such an aristocrat
among the luscious beauties of the garden as the exacting peach, and
there is nothing to prevent, either in soil or climate, a finer quality
being grown in the Delta.
What is needed is the selection of new and suitable varieties,
accompanied by careful watching of results; in fact, the intelligent
management of a good experimental gardener, not one akin to that of
Egypt, who selects with extreme conservatism the easiest way to his
desired ends. He consequently devotes his time to those fruits which
flourish easily and well. His attention has been given principally to
the growing of the _citrus_ family, to the exclusion of such fruits as
pears and plums, which are imported from Syria and Turkey. In fact, in
spite of the possibilities of the Delta, how great is the want of
enterprise may readily be seen when it is stated that the value of the
imports of fruit may amount to many thousand pounds per annum.
Unfortunately, our two most home-like and familiar fruits--apples and
pears--do not succeed here, the climate being far too hot. Pears have a
very small share of the land, and the fruit is not of the best quality.
But while it is doubtful about the apple, this doubt ought not to extend
to the pear, which is a lover of heat, and, as regards the better sorts,
delicate and tender in its constitution. There can be no doubt that if
a careful selection of some of the best French and Belgian varieties
were introduced, a fair meed of success would be the result, for it
seems almost contrary to reason that such kinds as the fragrant _Doyenne
de Comice_ and _Glou Morceau_, which fail as standards in the inclemency
of an English season, and crack and speck if they are not protected by a
wall, should not succeed in Egypt if they are given a fair trial.
Not that there is much need for experiment in a country which can grow
its grapes gloriously in the open air, the vines not asking for the help
of glass. Some half dozen varieties are produced in Egypt, and flourish
well under treatment of the simplest kind. The cultivation of the vine
extends over the whole of the province of Fayoum. In this latter
district a white grape, called after its habitat the "Fayoumi," is the
favourite in the market, and it is the earliest that ripens. The
berries are medium sized, but the flavour is excellent and the fruit
very juicy.
There is little question of training or trellis work, for, somewhat
after the fashion of the vineyards in France, the vines are grown as
bushes of about two feet high; and the result, though not the production
of the bunches of the Vale of Eshcol, is still abundance.
Two varieties are grown in the Delta and Cairo districts, namely
"Roumy"--a kind derived from Greece--and "Shawishi." Here, as opposed
to the cultivation in the province of Fayoum, the vines are mostly
trained on lattice work so as to form what the old gardeners called a
pergola, or covered way. Both these varieties are heavy croppers,
bearing bunches whose berries are of a greenish red, while the flavour
is very good.
Egypt is a land of vines and vineyards, much space being given to the
cultivation of the grape, though not for the purposes of carting to the
winepress, the Moslem religion being antagonistic to the grape's
fermented juice. Each district has its favoured kind, and in that of
Alexandria and along the shore of the Mediterranean the vine is
abundantly grown close to the ground, the soil being pure sand.
There is a peculiarity in the cultivation here, for V-shaped trenches
are cut to a depth of from six to nine feet. Then vine shoots are
planted in the bottom of the trench, where the young rootlets they put
forth are within reach of water. Vegetation is rapid, and the canes
gradually cover the slopes on either side, while in two years the vines
begin to bear.
The bushes receive no irrigation from above, only depending upon the
so-called winter rains, which are fairly frequent near the sea, and, as
has been shown, gaining their support from beneath the sand at the
bottom of the trench. But though no irrigation is brought to bear,
these ground vineries require annually an application of manure if the
best results are to be obtained.
As the land of the Delta is practically level, it affords scarcely any
opportunities for the growth of the grape vine upon sunny slopes, this
being the only instance in Egypt where grapes are grown with this
exposure, while these slopes are all artificially made.
As regards insect pests, they may be almost classed as _nil_, and the
grower will not hear of thrip and scale, mealie bug, or red spider, so
that the cultivation is conducted under the most favourable conditions;
but the ubiquitous sparrow is even there, and, unless means are taken to
scare away or destroy him, his ravages amongst the sweet berries are
great.
Here, too, as may be supposed where grapes are produced to so great an
extent, the thinning of the berries is not resorted to, and consequently
they are not so large as might be expected from the heat of the climate
and the favourable conditions under which they are grown, nor is the
flavour so fine as that of the beautiful bunches so carefully tended and
watched under glass in an English vinery; but they command a ready sale
at about twopence per pound when the fruit is ripe, from the beginning
of June.