94 . STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ibility to diseases and low temperatures, inferior fruits, and a shorter- 

 lived tree. Profit from peaches does not come by having a large crop 

 every alternate year, with nothing the other years, but the endeavor 

 should be to produce a good crop of fine fruit every year.' The method 

 of pruning counts for a great deal in securing this result. The best time 

 to do the pruning is early in the spring after the danger from winter 

 injury has passed and before the leaves appear. 



The system of pruning will vary Avith ideas of the grower, but the pur- 

 pose should be to keep the top open, spreading and low. An open top 

 will permit the sunlight to give high color to the fruit, and help to 

 produce fruiting wood low down in the tree. A spreading top is ob- 

 tained by cutting off the leaders just above a side branch which is 

 growing toward the outside of the tree, or, in case of the absence of the 

 branch, just above an outside bud. This form of a head is the natural 

 consequence of cutting back and thinning out and gives a large amount 

 of bearing area close to the ground. The necessity for spraying is 

 reason enough for a low headed tree, but it has another decided ad- 

 vantage when the fruit is thinned or picked. Also, according to in- 

 vestigations carried on among peach growers of New York and Mich- 

 igan by U. P. Hedrick of the New York Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion* a low headed peach tree is more hardy and vigorous than one 

 with a high head. 



Many growers do not cut out any of the small twigs in pruning, but 

 this makes a very easy way of thinning the crop. In young bearing trees, 

 it is quite a safe rule to clip off every alternate twig. Unless the 

 buds are killed to a very large extent, the fruit will require a heavy 

 thinning after this. Any rule of this kind must be suited to condi- 

 tions, as pruning should vary with the characteristics of the tree, variety 

 and season. Judgment is a large factor in pruning and this will be 

 developed very largely by experience. 



Spraying. — It is now a common practice for the best growers to spray 

 the trees for leaf curl. Until the advent of the San Jose scale, copper 

 sulphate solution was the spraying solution for this disease, and is 

 used to some extent todny where the scale is not present, but wherever 

 the scale is found or suspected, the lime-sul])hur wash is applied while 

 the trees are dormant and destroys the San Jose scale and prevents the 

 leaf curl disease. Full descriptions of these preparations are to be 

 found in the bulletin on sprayingf and it is enough to state here that 

 if the Avork is done thoroughly, and at the proper time, good results will 

 surely follow. 



The summer spraying of the peach in Michigan has not as 3^et been 

 practiced to a very large extent, due probably to several reasons. The 

 Brown Rot (Sclerotinia fructigena) (more apparent on the fruit about 

 ripening time, but often destructive to the blossoms) is not thought 

 to be often seriously destructive to many of the varieties commercially 

 grown in the state. The preparation and labor of spraying with the 

 self-boiled lime-sulphur mixture is, by many growers, considered very 

 irksome. However, the results of many careful experiments and the 



♦Fifty-flfth Annual Report of The Western New York Horticultural Society ; Notes on the 

 Peach. By U. P. Hedrick : 1010, p. 26. 



tSent upon request to the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. 



