FRUIT-GROWING. 19 



should not care any thing about potash salts, because I 

 should not only get potash, but I should get some phosphate 

 of lime, in the ashes. With that application, you will cer- 

 tainly get better peaches than you can with animal manure. 

 The reason, I think, is that peach-trees, when they are young, 

 ought not to be forced. The first two or three years they 

 grow very fast. You want a fair growth, but not a growth 

 the second year of six or eight feet on a limb (as they will 

 grow if you give them much manure) ; because, if you grow 

 them in that way, they are very liable to winter-kill. I 

 want a peach-tree grown in a peculiar way. I have a piece 

 of ground covered with peach-trees planted about five years 

 ago. There are about seventy-five of them ; and I think 

 seventy-five handsomer peach-trees never stood in Massachu- 

 setts in one lot. 



If you ask me how I would go to work to raise a peach- 

 orchard, I say, I want to get one-year-old trees, and plant 

 none older. I would like trees that have had a good growth, 

 say five or six feet high. Then, before I planted them out, 

 I would cut off all the broken roots, trimming them off nicely 

 with a knife, and trim off every side-branch of the tree. I 

 have then a straicrht stick. I would set them out in that 

 way, and then cut them all off to a height of about four or 

 five feet from the ground. I want them to branch out u]) 

 there. That is contrary to the usual way of growing peach- 

 trees. People say they want to have them branch out close 

 down to the ground, because they will not split so badly, — 

 they won't be up so high in the air. This is an error ; for, 

 if you allow them to branch low, the branches will run up 

 at a pretty acute angle, and that angle will always split. 



After treating the trees as I have suggested, after the first 

 year's groAvth, at any time of the year j^ou choose, shorten 

 off those leading branches perhaps to a foot in length. 

 When you shorten them, cut to an outside bud. The differ- 

 ence between cutting to an outside bud or an inside bud is, 

 that the inside buds run up straight in the centre of the 

 tree, and get up in the air, where you do not want them. 

 Cut to a bud pointing outside, and that branch will take a 

 curve, grow outward, and spread tlie tree. That is the 

 first thing to do. Then you follow that up about three or 

 foiu- years. Let the small branches go, and cut the strong 



