432 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Trees; Division of Poiiiolog}* Circular 3, entitled Notes on Fruit 

 Culture. 



A practical handbook on the cultivation in Great Britain of peaches 

 under glass and out of doors against walls has also recently appeared. 

 The work is entitled "The Book of the Peach," by H.' W. Ward, 

 London; Walter Scott Pub. Co., Ltd., 1903, pp. 113, pis. 1, figs. 28. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



Among the more important facts which seem to have been brought 

 out in the experiments herein reported may be mentioned the 

 following: 



The peach normally makes about four-fifths of its wood growth 

 by midsummer. Cultivation for the sake of the tree should, there- 

 fore, be done early in the season. By the end of July the flower 

 buds begin to form in the South, and in the North by September. 



Dormant, well-ripened flower buds will stand a temperature many 

 degrees below zero, when less mature buds may be killed by even 

 zero weather. There is a marked difference in the hardiness of dif- 

 ferent varieties, those of the Peen-to race being the tenderest and 

 those of the Persian race the hardiest. 



The pistil of a flower bud is the first to show injury from freezing, 

 takmg on a brownish or blackened appearance. The buds swell and 

 blossom when conditions above the ground are favorable. Bloom- 

 ing is in a large mea.sure independent of root action. Early varieties 

 generally bloom later than late varieties. Peaches appear to be 

 Cjuite generally self-fertile. 



In localities where flower buds are normall}" killed by cold a crop 

 can generally be secured by laying down the trees on the aj^proach 

 of winter and protecting with a light coA^ering until danger from 

 frost is past in spring. 



Whitewashing is a cheap method of retarding tlie s\\ elling of fruit 

 buds in the winter and delaying blooming in the spring. 



Winter injury is most severe in orchards or individual trees of low 

 vitality induced either by lack of cultivation or fertilizers, the attacks 

 of insects or diseases, overbearing, poor physical condition of the soil, 

 drought, exces.sive moisture, etc. 



A mulch of weeds, grass, cover crops, manure, etc., greatly lessens 

 the winter injury over that in orchards on bare ground. To avoid 

 winter injury to the greatest extent such thorough cultural practices 

 nnist be maintained as will keep the trees in a vigorous, thrifty con- 

 dition all the time. The fertilitv and vegetable matter of the soil 

 must be niaintahied bv the addition of manure or tlie growing of 

 cover crops, and spraying to control insect pests and fungus diseases 

 must be thorough and unremittent. 



