Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-02-28
FACTS ABOUT EAST TENNESSEE.
Raising Fruit.

Raising Fruit.
eF"." ttN NO. LIN. aNsfaA
ave give below communication on the
subject of Fruit Raising and make it one
of our East Tennessee Articles for it af-
fords an answer TO many inquiries being
propounded. Our people are waking up
on this subject of raising fruit. A sub
seriber from Sewer. county informed us
Monday that over eleven hundred dollars
worth of fruit trees were sold in that
county this spring by one firm.
Our people have heretofore given
rs one excuse for not raising more
fruit, that they had no ready market for
it, How is the fact? We have been pay
ing from fifty to seventy-fve cents per
peck for apples in theKnoxville market and
most of them brought from the North at
that. If our farmers will dig good cellars
and pits to preserve their fruit, so that
they need not send it into market all at
once they will find it will pay them well.
The market in East Tennessee is improv-
ing every day, and by the time our friends
get their trees to bearing they will find
market enough. But we invite attention
to the following article:
FARMERS CLUB Room,
MADISoNVILLE, MONROE Co.,
February 20, 1872,
EDITORS CHRONICLE: notice among
the many inquiries from yonr numerous
correspondents, the feasibility of raising
fruit in East Tennessee is made q special
matter of inquiry.
propose to say the north sides of our
knob lands and near their tops, furnish the
required position and facilities for an en-
tire success in fruit, as much 50 rs the eli
mate of Ohio The lands are sufficiently
rich for the successful growing of trees,
and are more free from borer and curculio
than the bottom land. The same result is
attained as you approach the ele-
waited lands in and near the Smoky
Mountain range when both in Ten
nessee and Western North Carolina
fruit of all kinds is annually produced in
great abundance and in great variety. Lo-
cation is essential with reference to all
available means to retard the early germi-
nation of the fruit by seeking the north
hill side and as much elevation as may
be practical. The fruit producing district
of western New York only includes some
five or six counties along the Lake shore
from Niagara river east, and froma careful
and reliable compilation by committee of
the Horticultural Society of western New
York, the county of Niagara has shipped
from her productions of 1871 the following
fruits:
Apples 600 barrels
Cherries............. ..........., 900 bushels.
Plums msr........................ 600 bushels.
Pears.,...........".......,..,". $,eR0 3,0 barrels
lulnces....,. liZuO Darrels.
0O,OO crates.
pes................................ 400 tons.
Orleans county, $4,000 barrels of apples.
Monroe county, 10000
Wayne county, 10000
Gennessee county, 5000 +"
East of Wcyne county but small amount
of fruit is grown. Now for this very
. extraordinary yield of fruit in this
special locality, MY theory without
going into philosophical detail is
simply that the open lakes being shall
low furnish a large amount of ice which
flows out by the Niagara River by a de-
preston Of some $50 feet into
Lake Ontario, a large body of water OF
unknown depth, and which is never
frozen, and by the drift or currents, this
body of ice is drifted on to the south shore
of the lake and then is held, as is evil
denced by the fact that the body of Nor
gan, which, as alleged, was sunk in the
Niaraga River, floated out and was found
by Thurlow Weed at or near the mouth OF
Oak Orchard Creek in Orleans county
This is matter of history and must be
satisfactory as against any question OF
philosophy. If the dead body of Morgan
floated there the ice would. Now the
presence OF so vast body OF Ice II
the immediate locality keeps back
vegetation and prevents the germ o.
the fruits being injured by the early frosts
consequently fruit growing in Western
New York is as sure a crop as corn in Eas
Tennessee. --
Now / maintain that if our people vii
make orchards on the locations the mos
productive of same results we can hav,
a good fruit country-and have it annual
~.
- a substantial and reliable farmer in thi
county (and that is the only kind we have
in MOnrOe) told me on his farm on IslanC
Creek. he had a fruit tree OH the north sid
of a hill and on an upper table which haC
rarely failed to yield fruit every year TO
thirty years, and wished me to enter int
an arrangement with him to furnish til,
trees from Rochester,, to plant an orcharC
as a speculation. If was younger MAJ
l would Ego for him." You find al
sover East Tenn essee similar facts, wher
fruit trees have the north hillside location
and the proper elevation. The philOsoph,
is practical, and is well known to all care
ful seekers after the science, and is tn
principal, If not sufficient argument 70
substantial and progressive farmers h
identify themselves actively in the effort
to disseminate agricultural Information b,
societies, clubs, fairs and conventions