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.