The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-22
COAST CLIMATE PUTS BLUSH ON
 MOBILE PEACH
Profitable And Pleasur- able Enterprise For
 Agriculturist

That deQclouS 1rult, the peacn, WHICH grows to such excellence in Mobile county, is of Asiatic origin, although its five races or leading varieties are credited to different countries. The fruit is to be found in three distinct shapes, the flat, the round and the pointed or reverse shape. Whatever the variety and wherever its origin the same juicy sweetness has made it one of our most popular fruits.
 So subject to frost damage as to war rant the assumption that it is a native of the tropics, where it is an evergreen, 1t develops and produces choice fruit in a variety of climates. China and Persia, at the opposite extremes of Asia, claim to be the home of our southern peaches and the Peento race of peaches, or the flat variety, was first noted in Georgia, and is credited to that section. The Spanish race, with it's more pointed shape, is given to Spain because no rec ord of prior location has been found. The North China or China cling and the Persian peach are ancestors of the choieer peaches of this country, the popular Elberta having been developed from a cross of the two.
 In general Persia is credited with being the home of the first peach, which has been called the Persian apple. The proximity of the Garden of Eden to Persia may be responsible for the belief that the peach and not the apple led to the fall of man. In more recent times many human slips have resulted from too great attention to modern peaches. History Of Peach
 It is known that from Persia peaches were imported to Italy under the Elm peror Claudius, that from Italy they were introduced into Great Britain in the middle of the sixteenth century, and thence to America little more than century later, or about 1880. Although the record is lacking it is possible that from Italy the peach was also trans planted into Spain, and that local con ditions brought about such changes in form and quality as appear in the Spanish race of peaches.
 In America the peach has been brought to great excellence and popu" larity, new varieties having been de- yeIoped by nurserymen seeking for har- dier or earlier maturing, or later matur- ing fruit. Grown successfully in all parts of the country, the commercial growing of the fruit has been given most attention in the southeastern states, in the states adjacent to the Great Lakes and on the Pacific coast. In each section the fruit has taken on local color or flavor, as on the Pacific coast, where flavor has been sacrificed to size and color, but nowhere does the quality of the fruit excel that grown on the redlands of Mobile county and the territory adjacent to the coast.
 In this Mobile territory the most ex- tensive planting has been in the Vicin- ity of Atmore, 40 miles north of Mobile, where hundreds of acres of choice fruit have given profitable return to the growers.
 Mobile county has had several eras of peach planting, the peach industry having advanced only by fits and starts. The tenderness of the trees and their numerous insect enemies, with the con- seuuent requirement. for constant care at all stages of growth, tend to dis courage many who start peach culture with enthusiasm but without knowl- edge and only the genuine peach lover stays by the game to its ultimate sue cess.
 An untimely frost may cut out an en- tire crop, or some slight inattentiOn may allow a foothold for some of the many peach diseases, but the confirmed peach grower will keep busy at all BCAB0S duU LuuS Dc Gcduy AOE LHo A1A~ mense profit that comes with a favor able season.
 That there are those who believe in the crop and stick to it in bad seasons as we'll as good is evident in the sev- eral hundred acres already planted and cared for even during the of" years. The plantings are too scattered to per init any accurate estimate of the acre age in Mobile and adjoining counties but there is an evidently increasing acreage annually. There are many five and ten-acre orchards and a few of much larger size, but the chief plant ing is in smaller plats. Then again some of the later paintings have been in combination with the ocean, which is a long lived tree and begins to bear after the peach has outlived its usefulness. At 20-foot intervals the peaches are planted with 12 oceans to the acre. dis placing the peaches at 60-foot intervals and in full growth covering the entire area of the orchard after elimination of the peaches.
 Ripe peaches have been picked in Mo bile county in late April, but generally the early varieties ripen for market to- ward the last of May, and for two months different varieties of Mobile grown peaches may be looked for in any favorable season. So popular is the fruit that nurserymen are seeking still later ripening varieties in order to 1engthen the market season. Beginning with the Greensboro, Maynower and Carmen, the local growers continue with Early anl Late Crawford, Belle of Georgia, Elberta, Hale and other vari- ks AL AL