86 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



call first-class peaches in a peach year, but they suffered for cultivation 

 and that sort of thing. The experience of the last year in some sections, 

 regarding the care and pruning of peaches, has had quite an effect. 



Mr. Morrill: How has it affected you? You consider this an excep- 

 tion, don't you, that may not occur again in ten years? 



Mr. Graham: Yes, sir. 



Mr. Morrill: You would not bring it up here to do away with our 

 various practices and ideas— the exception? 



Mr. Graham: No. I think there was a necessity for it. The trees 

 were weakened and curl-leaf came, and notwithstanding all that even 

 our Elbertas are going into winter this year in elegant shape. 



Mr. Morrill: A rather shortage of growth? 



Mr. Graham: They have plenty of growth. Last year they went into 

 winter with four or five feet of growth, a good many of the Elberta 

 trees; this year they are going in with ten to fifteen or twenty inches 

 all over the tree. 



Prof. Taft: I have seen the effects of curl-leaf, and yet it seems to me 

 we can, if we understand the nature of this disease, explain why it 

 showed itself so markedly during the last spring. Curl-leaf is a fungous 

 disease, and is more likely to attack leaves, provided the weather is 

 I'old and wet, when they are half-grown; and you can see that in orchards 

 such as Mr. Graham's or Mr. Morrill's we would have, earlv in the 

 spring, a strong and very rapid growth coming out, whereas the orchard 

 that was not cared for in the way of cultivation would have a compara- 

 tively slow growth, and this growth would be less likely to be injured 

 by disease, and with that understanding of it I think it is piain enough 

 why, in the one case, cultivation s(M^med to increase the injury from 

 curl-leaf, and it did not show itself very much in the other orchard. 



Mr. Graham: You can not get a combination so as to cover all these 

 contingencies. The o.nly way a man can do is to ascertain the proper 

 way to cultivate an orchard in an average season. ' In such seasons 

 the man that worked and pruned his orchard in the spring to prevent 

 excessive bloom and consequent pollen exhaustion, and subsequently 

 thinned his peaches properly and gave them thorough cultivation and 

 kept that up until the fall, is the successful peach-grower, and you can 

 not get a combination that will cover a season that only happens once 

 in twenty years. The man that goes to work on all of his peach trees or 

 apple trees and gets his growth early in the season, and then utilizes the 

 last half of the summer to )ipen it up and get it into winter quarters 

 in good condition, through a system of tillage and continuous growth, 

 is the successful man, and I believe that if Mr. Morrill will go right on 

 with his Breed weeder and his shortening in he will be able to start a 

 bank sooner than the fellow who does not. 



Mr. Morrill: Going back to the apple, in. the condition that you inquire 

 about. Prof. Tracy, we find that orchards that were neglected have suf- 

 fered, and 1 hat there are hardly any fruit buds on them this winter. Now, 

 this is not normal. Through neglect and lack of spraying by many of 

 our people, they are not going to have a crop, because the buds are not 

 there, while those who have taken this same care I spoke of have got a 

 heavy setting of buds. One of these gentlemen called my attention to 

 that two months ago. Since then I went through my orchard and others, 

 and I found that same condition around in our vicinity — the buds have 



