This is important to everything we cultivate. But, as everything can not
have the best location, we should study it with reference to those
things most affected by it, especially fruits. Fruits escape late frosts
when growing near rills or small brooks. Orchards near the shores of
bodies of water--as on Lake Erie about Cleveland, Ohio--bear luxuriantly
when all fruit a few miles back is cut off by late frosts. On the
summits of hills, fruits escape late frosts, when they are all cut off
in the valleys below. On the Ohio river above Cincinnati, peaches are
very liable to destruction by late frosts. We have seen them all frozen
through in one night, and turned black the next day, in the month of
May, after they had grown to the size of marrowfat-peas. One season,
when there were no peaches in any other locality within a hundred miles,
we knew an orchard, on a Kentucky hill, so high and steep, that it took
miles of winding around the hill, to ascend it with a team. Those trees
were perfectly loaded with peaches, that sold on the tree at four
dollars per bushel, and in Cincinnati market at seven to eight dollars.
In Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, there are such hills, that may be
turned to more valuable account than any of the rest of their land, that
are not now considered good for anything--even for sheep-pastures. The
same is true in the hilly parts of all the states. Good fruit of some
kind will grow on them all, every year.