294 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



there is a good deal of humbug about all these fine roots on peach trees. 

 Some people say, "Give me a nice lot of fine roots; I want trees that have 

 XI great mass of fine roots." That is all right. Well, now, bless your 

 heart, it is hardly possible to take a tree from the soil and handle it with 

 the greatest care on your own grounds, and preserve the vitality of those 

 fine roots, much less in handling it over any distance, as we ordinarily 

 do; so that my belief and my experience are that if you get a medium- 

 size tree with two or three large roots on it, you have all you need; and if 

 you have a good sharp knife and will cut the most of those off, and also 

 the top, J on are better off still in starting the orchard. My Georgia 

 orchard was started by taking small trees, fifteen or eighteen inches in 

 height only, cutting them down to twelve inches, and then cutting the 

 roots almost entirely off, to less than an inch of root, and cutting in 

 such a way that what were left were in fan shape. If the roots ran in 

 three or four directions, the two outside were cut off, and then those roots 

 were planted by putting a spade down into the ground and pressing it 

 forward and putting that stub in there. Less than one half of one per 

 cent, failed to grow. 



You want a thoroughly prepared soil in which to plant your peach 

 trees. My own opinion is that a medium-size tree, neither a very large 

 nor a very small one, is best; that the roots want pretty close pruning, 

 and they want good, clean-cut pruning, not such as the nurserymen give 

 them with their machines, but a careful cutting; and if you cut very 

 closely you will get far more rapid and sure growth. But some will 

 differ with me. 



Mr. Garfield: Would you treat trees the same way in Georgia and 

 Connecticut, in planting out? 



Mr. Hale: What I am talking of now is methods of planting for Con- 

 necticut and not Georgia, although all my trees planted in Connecticut 

 for the last five years have been closely root-pruned. 



Mr. Lyon : Do you think that that process will do as well at the north 

 as at the south? 



Mr. Hale: I am practicing it in Connecticut, sir, and would in Mich- 

 igan wore I here, and yet I may be mistaken, I say after a few years; but 

 your climatic conditions in Michigan are more favorable than ours in 

 Connecticut, by considerable. 



As to the cutting back at the top, the general practice and recommen- 

 dation has been to cut down to a single stub and allow a few to grow near 

 the top. The objection to that is, we often form crotches in our trees 

 that split down in later life. Some successful growers have followed 

 that by another cutting back, leaving six or eight inches on perhaps three 

 side branches, and then perhaps two or three more at the top, leaving 

 them four inches in length, and so starting the new growth from side 

 branches already established, and there is not much question but what 

 it leaves a more permanent head and less liability to splitting down than 

 where we whittle down to a single cane and start entirely new side 

 shoots. 



Early spring, of course, is the only time to plant peach orchards for 

 best success. You may do it in the fall, in certain localities, if you can 

 get thoroughly ripened trees; but you can not, of course, with northern- 

 grown trees. I believe, while it is easier in gathering fruit to have 



