EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 215 



influence of lake Michigan can be secured, with a suitable elevation, a 

 well-drained and properly fertilized soil, and intelligent treatment of the 

 orchards, a crop can on an average be expected in two out of three if not 

 three out of four years. The crop is, therefore, not absolutely a certain 

 one, and judging from the past we may occasionally expect a winter in 

 which, even in the peach-growing sections, the peach trees except in unu- 

 sually favorable locations will be badly injured, if not killed outright. 



HARDINESS OF THE PEACH. 



While the peach is classed among the tender fruits, it is only relatively 

 so, as, if in good condition, the fruit buds of our best commercial varieties 

 €an withstand for a considerable length of time a temperature of twelve 

 or fifteen degrees below zero, and instances have been known where 

 peach trees have been subjected to eighteen or twenty degrees for a short 

 time, and a fair crop secured the following summer. 



In a location adapted to peach culture, and with hardy varieties, it is not 

 the extremely low temperatures that are to be feared, so much as the 

 entering on the winter with trees in an unripened condition, or the injury 

 likely to follow the swelling of the buds during a warm spell in winter, 

 while in some localities the danger from late spring frosts is even more to 

 be dreaded. Among the other conditions that will greatly affect the 

 amount of injury done by cold, are the circumstances under which the 

 trees are thawed out. If after a very cold snap, when the thermometer has 

 gone as low as minus eighteen or twenty degrees, the sun comes out bright 

 and an immediate and rapid rise in temperature ensues, the fruit buds 

 will almost invariably be destroyed, and the trees themselves may be seri- 

 ously injured; on the other hand, if the sun remains clouded and the trees 

 are slowly thawed out, many of the buds may, if they were in perfect con- 

 dition, escape. Little, if anything, can be done to secure a gradual thaw- 

 ing out of the trees, but an earnest effort should be made to so handle the 

 orchard that the trees will enter upon the winter in as perfect condition 

 as possible. So much depends upon the effect of elevation and exposure, 

 that the intelligent fruitgrower will make a thorough investigation into 

 the climatic condition possessed by a certain locality before selecting it as 

 a site for a peach orchard. 



A section of a bud that is in a perfect condition, compared under a 

 microscope with one from a bud in which development has commenced, 

 will show how it is that one may escape while the other is injured. The 

 dormant bud has its scales folded closely together but, in the one that 

 has started, they have a loose, open appearance that causes them to feel the 

 effect of the slightest change in temperature ; on the one hand they are easily 

 chilled and, on the other, the thawing out will be so rapid that injury will 

 almost certainly ensue. While the . structural condition of the bud itself 

 has much to do with its ability to withstand cold, it is probable that the 

 main reason why the dormant bud is less susceptible to cold is that the 

 vital functions of the tree are at rest while, after the buds have commenced 

 to swell, the cell contents are in an active condition and the amount of 

 water they contain is much increased. 



INFLUENCE OF LAKE MICHIGAN. 



The fruitgrowers in the western part of the state, with orchards within 

 one to ten miles of lake Michigan, have a location that is particularly 



