Peach-Growing in Oregon. 95 



for the peach. You will get more satisfactory results, with a higher grade of 

 peaches, to plant your young trees 20 by 20 feet apart, 108 trees to the 

 acre. This distance gives ample room for the tree to draw its nourishment 

 from and gives you ample room to bestow the necessary cultivation. Plant 

 the trees the same depth they stood in the nursery, pruning oflf all broken 

 and bruised roots with a sharp knife, packing the fine earth firmly around 

 the roots. 



TIME TO PLANT. 



In this climate I would prefer fall or early winter for planting. The 

 winter rains pack the earth around the rootlets, and the roots callous and 

 heal over before spring, the period when growth begins. I have noted that 

 trees planted in the fall or early winter always make a better growth than 

 if planted in the spring. 



CULTIVATION. 



It would be useless to attend to all other details in planting a peach 

 orchard and expect success without good cultivation. Good, careful culti- 

 vation during the season of growth is very important. The soil should be 

 stirred often with harrow or spring-tooth to prevent the growth of weeds 

 and conserve moisture. 



PRUNING THE PEACH. 



Aside from cutting back the young tree when first planted, the first year 

 there will be no necessity for pruning excepting the February following, 

 when, should the growth be too thick, it should be thinned out to admit 

 sunlight and air and to preserve symmetrical proportions and balance of the 

 young tree. 



After the first year's growth, the second year's growth will be the time 

 when you should begin annual pruning for the purpose of growing fancy 

 peaches, and, too, to prolong the life and vigor of your peacn trees. To 

 become an expert pruner of the peach, the pruner must know and under- 

 stand the characteristics of the growth of the peach. First, it must be 

 remembered that the peach bears its fruit on the annual growth of 

 the preceding year; that the yearly growth must be had each year, or 

 there will be no fruit buds for the fruit the year following. You have, no 

 doubt, noted than an old, unpruned peach orchard bears what little fruit 

 it produces each year on the extreme ends of its limbs, and the space from 

 the ground to the terminal fruiting spurs are bare, with dead twigs and 

 worm-eaten limbs showing decay, and a gradual dying of the tree. Why do 

 peach orchards five to six years after planting present this apeparance? 

 Because of the want of intelligent annual pruning. If you please, let us 

 take the annual growth of a peach twig and examine it — its fruit-buds and 

 leaf-buds. You will note on close examination that the terminal bud is a 

 leaf-bud. strong, large and vigorous, that the buds down the twig are single 

 and compound, that some are fruit-buds, single and compound. In ease of 

 compound fruit-buds, you will always find a leaf or wood-bud between 

 them. Now, you will note these buds beginning at the terminal bud down 

 the twig are strong, vigorous buds down to near the lower part of the twig; 

 here you will find, near the base of the twig, a number of flat wood-buds. 

 These flat wood-buds are weak buds, and unless stimulated by intelligent 

 pruning perish with the annual growth of the peach. This perishing of these 

 weak wood-buds annually is the reason that from year to year the fruiting 

 of an unpruned peach tree is annually extended to the terminal branches 

 of the peach tree, and the intervening space becomes bare of growth and 

 unproductive, and the unjiruned tree begins to die. As a rule an unpruned 

 peach tree will not be productive and will not pay to gather the fruit after 

 six years old. 



