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Production Of Apples In Barrels In The United States From 1896 To 1910
Heavy Plantings
The Outlook For The Growing Of Apples
Future Of Apple Growing
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Heavy Plantings
Moreover, it should be further noted that this
falling off in the apple crop has been in the face of the heaviest
plantings ever known in this country. During the last ten years old
fruit growing regions like western New York have practically doubled
their orchard plantings. Careful figures gathered by the New York
State Agricultural College in an orchard survey of Monroe County show
that 4,972 more trees (21,289 in all) were planted in one
representative township during the five year period from 1904 to 1908
inclusive than were ever planted in any other equal period in its
history. New fruit regions like the Northwestern States and a large
part of the Shenandoah valley of Virginia have been developed by heavy
plantings. These three are all great commercial sections. To them we
might add thousands of orchards which are scattered all over the
Northern and Eastern States, from Michigan to Maine and from Maine to
north Georgia.
It is doubtful, however, if these scattered plantings have made good
the older trees which have died out. Scarcely a season passes that
hundreds of these old veteran trees are not blown down or badly
broken. Every wind takes its toll. After one of these windstorms in
Southern New York the writer estimated that at least twenty per cent
of all the standing old apple trees had been destroyed or badly
broken. In the commercial regions only a small part of the new
plantings have yet come to bearing and even here these probably do not
much more than make good the losses of old trees. So that on the
whole, heavy as our plantings have been, it is extremely doubtful if
they have very much more than made good the losses of the older trees
throughout the country. It is a fact worthy of note that this talk of
over-planting the apple has been going on for over thirty years, and
while the timid ones talked those who had faith in the business and
the courage of their convictions planted apples and reaped golden
harvests while their neighbors still talked of over-planting.
Whether or not it is true that we have over-planted the apple, it must
be admitted that at the present time the demand is so much greater
than the supply that the poorer of our people cannot afford to use
apples commonly, and that no class of farmer in the Northeastern
States is more prosperous than the fruit growers. The new plantings
must of necessity begin to bear and become factors in the market very
slowly. Meanwhile the great opportunity of the present lies in making
the most possible out of the older orchards which are already in
bearing. Practically all of these old farm orchards which can present
a fairly clean bill of health, and in which the varieties are
desirable, can with a small amount of well directed effort be put to
work at once and during the next ten years or more of their life time,
they may be made to add a substantial income to that of the general
farm. Now is a time of opportunity for the owner of the small farm
apple orchard.
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