Will t/ie Fuiure Man Eat Peaches f 85 



freestone, in both tree and fruit par excellence. Even in New York it is re- 

 ported as enduring the winters well when Crawford is killed to the snow. 

 Picquet's Late, a cross between Crawford and Columbia, and Scruggs, of 

 Texas, with similar parentage, are very sure and excellent. The fact that 

 such excellent varieties as these crosses between widely different strains 

 stand at the head of the list of fine and sure peaches is a valuable pointer to 

 the experimenter. 



The Oldmixon Free, Druid Hill, Mrs. Brett, Ringgold, Bonanza and (far 

 south) Onderdonk will not often disappoint. Of very late peaches, Crimson 

 Beauty, Henrietta, Lonoke, Bonanzi, Yellow Cobbler, are fine and sure, but 

 where Heath is the last peach to ripen are useless. They do well in all the 

 southern states. 



CHEAP SMOKE. 



Smudges, where plenty of smoke can be made cheaply, and the man is 

 vigilant enough to stay up all night and watch his thermometer, make his 

 smudges in the right place, sometimes save a line crop, and tlip.n that man is 

 happj', his neighbors disconsolate, and he declares that smudges return a 

 large percentage on the investment; yet there is much lottery in smudges 

 and smoke after all, especially the smoke of a man who saved his crop with 

 a few smudges when something else did it. 



For the Little Turk, I have nothing new. Eternal vigilance with the 

 sheet, funnel, mallet and coal-oil grave will secure much smooth, sound 

 fruit as against neglect. 



The rot — that terror of the early peach, nearly always and almost every 

 variety in the southern states in a wet season — I must acknowledge still 

 holds the situation. High location and thorough drainage avoid it to some 

 extent. I only dare suggest thorough spraying of the trees while the fruit 

 is yet young, and before the rot germ has penetrated, with a mixture in so- 

 lution of the sulphate of copper and lime —the Bordeaux mixture, so success- 

 ful in combating mildew in the grape. This, also, might be offensive to the 

 curculio, as in the grape it is to the insects which prey upon the leaves, and 

 thus rid us of two evils at once. Experiments are much needed here. 



Ah ! I see the most terrible ghost of all now coming — " The Yellows." 

 This scourge seems to permanently curse the very earth in which it once 

 devastites an orchard. It is a well-known fact that the regions in Delaware, 

 New Jersey and Michigan once famous for peaches produce peaches no 

 more. The "peach belt" has moved back time after time, with every set of 

 new orchards, to fresh lands. Good culture, vigorous varieties, potash ma- 

 nures, resting the land for a series of years where trees once have grown, 

 may again induce the peach to be grown with some success. Yet there are 

 localities, or soils, or climate^, which the yellows seems never to invade. 

 Such places are the table-lands on mountain spurs in East Tennessee and 

 other places in the south and in California. Yet it may be the disease is 

 only waiting its opportunity to blast these fair gardens. Let us hope for 



