Summer Meeting. 73 



then add i gallon of home-made soft soap and a gallon of tobacco juice. 

 Next slake lime as for washing trees or fencing; then mix ingredients 

 together. Wash the trees from' the roots to the lower limbs. For young 

 trees, size of hoe handle, I use the wash thin; put on trees about one- 

 tenth of an inch ; on old trees, loose or rough bark should be scraped off 

 and wash made thick, so it can be put on about the sixth of an inch. If 

 a little salt is added, the w^ash will stay on longer. I use salt on old trees 

 only. The past five years I have planted 1,500 peach trees, mostly on 

 new cleared timber land (the peach tree borers are mUch worse on new 

 land than on old ground) ; nearly all made a good, healthy growth ; but 

 eight failed to grow ; five killed with string being tied too tight to hold 

 paper on. These five trees, when I found them, were twice as large 

 above the string, which killed them, as below^ This proves that the sap 

 goes up in the inner sap wood and down in outside sap wood between 

 the wood and bark, and thus causes an abnormal growth. Six were 

 broken down by wind and cultivating. I will pay one dollar for every 

 borer that can be found in 1,476 trees. 



To save peach trees from winter-killing is to have the wood to ripen 

 early, cultivate early and quit about the last of July, and cut the weeds. 

 The varieties I planted are : Elberta, Salway, Champion, Crosby, ]\Ioun- 

 tain Rose, Family Favorite, Carmen, Crawford, Piquet's Late, Sneed 

 and Capt. Ede. None stood the past cold winter. Peach-growing in 

 Vernon county is discouraging; few trees are planted, but if we don't 

 plant we can't expect to harvest. 



PEACH PROBLEMS FOR 1905. 



(By Dr. Paul Evans, Fruit Station, Mt. Grove, Mo.) 



If the peach growers of -Missouri, especially those of the southern 

 part of the State, were insured of a crop every year, and that there would 

 be a fair market for their product, with reasonable transportation facili- 

 ties, the gold diggers of the West would shut up shop and come to the 

 Ozarks to grow peaches. I suppose there is no country where such fine 

 fruit can be produced at so small a cost, barring the above. It behooves 

 us then, as experimenters, to find, if possible, some means by which these 

 difficulties may be overcome ; either find some variety that can withstand 

 the expansion and contraction that takes place in a thermometer in 

 Missouri's climate, or some method of treating varieties now in use so 

 that the buds will not be injured by the extremes of heat and cold. 



A vast amount of work is now being done at the Mt. Grove Station 



