HOW TO PLANT AND SUBSEQUENTLY TREAT PEACH 



TREES. 



The peacli tree, even witliin our own recollection, was one of the 

 most healthy and vigorous trees of this part of the country. They 

 might be called almost a spontaneous production, appearing uncul- 

 tivated in almost every fence-corner, and almost yearly yielding a 

 crop of fruit. A.nd such peaches! The very conception makes our 

 mouth water. I have often thought of the wagon loads carried to 

 the distillery to save them. We then knew nothing about names 

 and cared less, for the natural fruit surpassed in size and flavor any 

 which we now have. But their glory is strangely departed, and the 

 question is, why this death and how we are best enabled to accomo- 

 date ourselves to present circumstances, and secure the best reward 

 for our labor. Some have thought and asserted that it was from 

 change in climate, that the peach will not now thrive as formerly. 

 This is not the fact. If there has been a change, the thermometer 

 does not show it. We have the thermometrical tables since the year 

 1814, and have the observations recorded in relation to this very 

 fruit. The winters are not more severe, but from the enfeebled con- 

 stitution of the tree from various causes, it is less able to endure 

 our winters, and sustain a severe freeze without injury ; just as an 

 enfeebled constitution suflFers from these March winds that once 

 were endured without sensible eff'ects. Now, the simple cause is 

 from the rascally worm preying upon the stem in its most vulnera- 

 ble point. This worm made its first appearance in the neighborhood 

 of Cincinnati, in the year 1826, and has been devastating and destroy- 

 ing ever since. We remember it well ; we had an orchard of six 

 hundred young trees, just ready to bear, embracing the best fruits 

 of the kind in the several periods of ripening from the fourth of 

 July to October, or the time of early frost. These were all destroyed 

 in a single season. As Pollock says of his favorite elm, we mourn- 

 ed their loss ' as though a friend had fallen ; ' since that time feeble- 

 ness has been entailed upon the very germ ; we have thought with- 

 in a few years that this j)es< — the worm — has in some measure sub- 

 sided, that its ravages have been mitigated. But this may be from 

 the better knowledge of its habits, and methods adopted for its ex- 

 tirpation. 



It seems now we must cat peaches in the sweat of the brow; in 



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