The equipment needed to care for a peach-orchard is quite uniform the
State over and the cost of the several items varies scarcely at all,
so that a very close approximation may be made of the total cost. The
items run about as follows: Team and harness at present price, $500;
spraying outfit, $250; wagon, plow, harrow, ladders, crates, pruning
tools, etc., $250; total, $1,000. These figures are below the mark
rather than above but the instances are few in which the equipment
itemized would be used exclusively for a ten-acre peach-orchard; in
fact, with this equipment thirty acres could be cared for. It is not
total cost, however, but depreciation and interest on money with which
we are concerned. Setting these at 20 percentum, we have $20.00 per
acre to charge to maintenance of equipment.
Year in and year out, tillage is the most costly ingredient in the
making of a good peach-orchard. It consists of plowing once a year,
fall or spring, and harrowing on the average at least ten times a
season. High cost of labor brings this item up to $10.00 per acre which
includes seeding the cover-crop but not the cost of seed, for which an
additional charge of $2.50 must be made for a combination crop of red
clover and oats or of vetch and barley.
It would seem easiest of all to ascertain the cost of fertilizers for
the peach but the practices are so diverse and fertilizers are applied
so irregularly by those who use them at all that the data at hand are
almost worthless. Those who plow under cover-crops regularly, spend
little for fertilizers; an occasional dressing of stable manure answers
for fertilization with many; still more, so uncertain of results
as to feel they are "buying a pig in the poke," spend nothing for
fertilizers. We shall enter a charge of $5.00 per acre for fertilizers
though this is without question above the average even if only
successful orchards be considered.
A more certain charge is that for pruning. The problems in pruning are
more of the mind than the hand and once the work is laid out it goes
along rapidly. An acre-average of $3.00 is sufficient to cover the
expense of pruning and thinning may be done, year in and year out, at
the same cost.
The peach-orchard is customarily sprayed but once in New York, an
application of the lime-sulphur wash being made to prevent leaf-curl
and to destroy San Jose scale. The cost of this single spray cannot
be more than $4.00 per acre but to this must be added a charge for
protection against mice and rabbits, destruction of borers and cutting
out trees infected with yellows or little-peach, averaging, all told,
at least $8.00 for keeping under pests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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