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 variety and abundance of seed. I believe that there are grasses
not yet adopted and hardly recognized by the great body of our
farmers--the buffalo-grass of the prairies for one--that will yet be
grown and prized over a great part of our country.
As for Hay-Making, my conviction is strong that our grass is cut in the
average from two to three weeks too late, and that not only is our hay
greatly damaged thereby, but our meadows needlessly impoverished and
exhausted. The formation and perfection of seed always draw heavily upon
the soil. A crop of grass cut when the earliest blossoms begin to
drop--which, in my judgment, is the only right time--will not impoverish
the soil half so much as will the same crop cut three weeks later; while
the roots of the earlier cut grass will retain their vitality at least
thrice as long as though half the seed had ripened before the crop was
harvested. Grass that was fully ripe when cut has lost at least half its
nutriment, which no chemistry can ever restore. Hay alone is dry fodder
for a long Winter, especially for young stock; but hay cut after it was
dead ripe, is proper nutriment for no animal whatever--not even for old
horses, who are popularly supposed to like and thrive upon it.
The fact that our farmers are too generally short-handed throughout the
season of the Summer harvest, while it seems to explain the error I
combat, renders it none the less disastrous and deplorable. I estimate
the depreciation in the value of our hay-crop, by reason of late
cutting, as not less than one-fifth; and, when we consider that a full
half of our farmers turn out their cattle to ravage and poach up their
fields in quest of fodder a full month earlier than they should, because
their hay is nearly or quite exhausted, the consequences of this error
are seen to diffuse themselves over the whole economy of the farm.
* * * * *
From the hour in which grass falls under the Mower, it ought to be kept
in motion until laid at rest in the stack or the barn; keep stirring it
with the tedder until it is ready to be raked into light winrows, and
turn these over and over until they will answer to go upon the cart. In
any bright, hot day, the grass mowed in the morning should be stacked
before the dew falls at night; while, if any is mowed after noon, it
should be cocked and capped by sunset, even though it be necessary to
open it out the next fair morning.
I have a dream of hay-making, especially with regard to clover, without
allowing it to be scalded by fierce sunshine. In my dream, the grass is
raked and loaded nearly as fast as cut, drawn to the barn-yard, and
there pitched upon an endless apron, on which it is carried slowly
through a drying-house, heated to some 200 deg. Fahrenheit by steam or by
charcoal in a furnace below, somewhat after the manner of a hop-kiln.
While passing slowly through this heated atmosphere, the grass is
continually forked up and shaken so as to expose every lock of it to the
drying heat, until it passes off thereby deprived of its moisture and is
precipitated into a mow or upon a stack-bottom at the opposite side;
load after load being pitched upon the apron continuously, and the
drying process going steadily forward by night as well as by day, and
without regard to the weather outside. I do not assert that this vision
will ever be realized; but I have known dreams as wild as this
transformed by time and thought into beneficent realities.
I ask no one to share my dreams or sympathise with their drift and
purpose. I only insist that Hay-making, as it is managed all around me,
is ruder in its processes and more uncertain in its results than it
should or need be. We cut our grass rapidly and well; we gather and
house it with tolerable efficiency; but we cure much of it imperfectly
and wastefully. The fact that most of it is over-ripe when cut
aggravates the pernicious effects of its subsequent exposure to dew and
rain; and the net result is damaged fodder which is at once unpalatable
and innutritious.
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 deg., or
from 50 deg. above to 10 deg. 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 preeminent 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.