Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1885-09-24
TINS YEARS PEAcH oRoP.
A AboutThree EIiIIion Esasikets shipped
This Season.

Correspondence Philadelphia Times.
MmDLETowN, Sept. 17.-With the ex-
ception of one or two late and unimpor-
tnDt varieties, the peach crop of the Del
aware and Maryland peninsula has been
marketed and the happy growers are,
collectively speaking, about $4,000, 900
richer than they We're eight or nine weeks
ago. The total yield is estimated at
3 100000 baskets. The Pennsylvania
railroad has carried to market about two
thirds of the crop. Half q million
baskets have been shipped to Philadelphia
or Baltimore by steamers, mainly from
the Maryland side of the Peninsula, and
the remaining half million baskets have
been evaporated or canned on the Penin-
sula, principally in Delaware.
The crop is nearly one and half mil
lion baskets short of that of 1884 and was
not 80 well distributed over the peach
growing belt. In Maryland the Queen
Anne's county orchards yielded full
crop, but the number of trees in bearing
is not large. Cecil, Kent and Caroline,
the other peach-producing counties of the
Eastern Shore, marketed less than half
full crop. In Delaware the yield was
light north of Wyoming. Sussex county
and strip of Kent bordering on the
Sussex line produced more than two
thirds of the crop. Middlctown, once
the great peach centre of Delaware and
which in 1875 shipped upwards of
800, 900 baskets from nearly million
bearing trees, has this season shipped
less than $4,000. The productive peach
belt has been steadily moving southwark.
In 1875 its centre was at Middletown,
fbraa ,rf l.l. 4 Il
Clayton, and in 1884 nearly 40 miles
south, at Wyoming.
Experienced fruit growers generally
acknowledge that the day of profitable
peach growing in the vicinity of Middle
town is past and that Sussex is to be the
future great peach producing county of
the State. Kent may grow good many
peaches during the next three or four
years, but southwark the course of sue
cessful peach culture takes its way in
Delaware, and five years hence Philadel-
phia, Boston and other cities where Della
ware has made herself best know by her
peaches may be dependent almost
entirely upon the sandy plains of Sussex
for supply of the most luscious of
fruits.
The soil of Sussex would seem to be
singularly well adapted to peach culture.
Nothing of that mysterious disease known
as the "yellows," which is generally the
early fate of orchards in New Castle and
the upper part Of Kent, hns been seen in
Sussex. Trees live and thrive and bear
there 70 great age. l went through an
orchard neur Milford II few days ago
which was planted i'll 1860. Many of the
trees have ylel,ird twelve baskets of fruit
his season and the net return of the
orchard to its owner will be upwards of
300 per acre. Speaking of this years
profits of peach culture, instances of net
yields running from 5000 to $500 per
acre are not uncommon in Sussex, and l
know of one orchard near Frederick, in
lower Kent, which is said to have paid the
owner this year $40, 900 and the tenant as
much more. / hear that half the peach
yield of this farm during the past eight
years has paid for seven farms.
OF course, these big returns from peach
culture in Sussex and lower Kent ore
having the effect to increase the business.
The high price obtained for fruit this
season has greatly helped the boom.
Every land-holder in the epeach. producing
belt is planting new orchards. Nursery
men can hardly supply the demand for
young trees and the price has been
greatly advanced. About 200, 900 trees
were planted last fall in Delaware and
probably as many more will be planted
this fall. The fever has extended into
the Maryland counties of the Peninsula
also, but is not SO general as in lower
Delaware.
The eyaporators and Gamers have used
nj lenst half million baskets of nenches
during the season, paying for them all
the way from 35 to rs cents per basket,
according to quality, The yield is from
three to four pounds of pared and about
five pounds of impaired evaporated fruit
per basket. The evaporators have greatly
increased within the past three or four
years. There are nearly 100 in operation
this season in and around Milford. Two
at Middletown will evaporate about 10000
baskets. The evaporators have greatly
helped the peach business by keeping all
inferior fuit ont of the city markets, and
by making a home market for large part
of the crop.
The Pennsylvania railroad has trans
ported the crop in way highly sntisfac-
tory to the growers, and the complaints
of delay and discrimination which the
growers indulSed in few years ago,
before the Delaware railroad and its little
feeders were under the management of
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, are
heard no more. This, i think, especially
worthy of mention, MS peaches must be
transported with SO much promptness
and care TO give anything like satisfaction
to the shippers.