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If I had done this, and had spent two hours a month in the management of it, it would now be a thing of beauty and an income-producing joy forever, or, at least, as long as my great-grandchildren will need it. There is no danger of overdoing orcharding. The demand for fruit increases faster than the supply, and it is only poor quality or bad handling that causes a slack market.
These are grown on irrigated land; a high price being paid both for the land itself and for the water-privilege, and the orchards are seldom more than ten acres in extent. Wind and frost may cause as much damage here as in the eastern states and plant diseases and insect enemies are equally liable to injure the crop. But here orcharding is carried on in a scientific manner.
Yet, by that unflagging industry and ingenious economy with which thousands wrestle with the necessities of such a life and throw them, too, they put saving to saving, until they were able to rent an acre of orcharding, a large garden for vegetables, then buy a donkey and cart, then a pony and cart, and load and drive them both to market with their own and their neighbors' produce, starting from home at two in the morning.
Malo, malo, malo, malo; it is translated thus: The fruit was an important item on the Aldington Manor Farm, and when later I bought an adjoining farm of seventy acres with orcharding, and had planted nine acres of plum trees, my total fruit area amounted to about thirty acres.
It should include a study of logging methods, log scaling, waste in logging, the equipment and handling of the mill, the sawing and care of rough and finished lumber, its grading, and so far as possible an acquaintance with wood working plants of various kinds, and with the operations of turpentine orcharding.
Cultivate, feed, prune, spray, dig bores, fight mice, rabbits, aphides, and the thousand other enemies to trees and fruit, and do these things all the time and then keep on doing them, and you will win out. Omit all or any of them, and the chances are that you will fail of big returns. But orcharding is not unique in this.
Remember that it is far more profitable to raise twenty baskets of fine, well-shaped, clean, handsome apples or peaches or any other hand-eaten fruit, than to raise a hundred barrels of stuff that is good only for the common drier or for the mill or hogpen. Care and common sense are the jackscrews to use in raising fine fruit. The apple is the great American fruit for extensive orcharding.
If you only have a few trees and can afford the time, you can, of course, bend and tie the branches as they grow, so that they will take directions which seem to you better, but this is not practicable in orcharding on a commercial scale. There is no disadvantage in crooked branches in a fruit tree, but they should crook in desirable directions, and that is where the art in pruning comes in.
It must be said, however, that in ordinary commercial fruit growing little attention is paid to these fine points, which are the great enjoyment of the European fruit-gardeners and are of questionable value in our standard orcharding. It is, however, a great mistake to clear away all low twigs, for such twigs bring the first fruit on young trees. Are Tap-Roots Essential?
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