1884.] PEACH EXPERIENCES. 15 



who achieves success with fruits or flowers, tliere is an ecstacy of 

 delight amply repaying all the cost either of time or money. In 

 all, since the period of early manhood I have planted ten orchards 

 of peaches. 



My first orchard had the elements of a grand success, and it was 

 a success, but by no means a great one, for the reason that I had 

 numerous varieties, whereas, I should have had only the best suc- 

 cession, §uch as Mountain Rose, Oldmixon Free, Stump the World, 

 Crawford's Early and Crawford's Late, in which case I should have 

 realized one hundred per cent, more profit than I actually did. 



My second orchard followed close on the first and was similar in 

 results. 



My third orchard was a grand and complete failure. With a wiser 

 choice of varieties, better trees, planted on my best land, highly 

 manured, I secured an enormous growth, succulent, full of crude 

 sap, and not stopping growth till hard frosts. The following severe 

 winter effected entire ruin. Branches were killed back, bark 

 turned brown and the orchard looked as if a devastating fire had 

 run through it. The only redeeming feature about it was that the 

 apple trees planted between peach have made a fine successful 

 orchard. 



My fourth orchard was small, a family orchard, just for ourselves 

 and friends, planted on poor land, manured moderately. It was 

 a quarter acre, the land worth three dollars, planted with fifty trees 

 worth five dollars, manure eight dollars, and the whole investment 

 did not exceed sixteen dollars. It was cultivated three years and 

 then mulched with coarse hay enough to smother weeds and grass. 



This orchard was successful in all respects; it gave good fruit 

 continuously for several successive years and paid a large percent- 

 age on the investment. 



My fifth orchard was a new experiment: it was an orchard of 

 seedlings from select seed, every alternate row being pear trees. 

 The trees were vigorous, reasonably healthy, and produced several 

 very heavy crops, but with one exception the fruit was only fair to 

 good, one however of the Melocoton type was very good. The 

 fruit mainly sold for fifty to seventy cents a basket, while the 

 Stump the World ripening about the same time, were worth one., 

 dollar and twenty-five to one dollar and fifty cents, or more than 

 double on the average. 



My sixth orchard closely followed the last described with seed 



