110 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[April, 



Fruit and Vegetable Gardening, 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



PLUM STOCKS FOR PEACH TREES. 



BY W. F. HEIKES, HUNTSVILLE, ALA. 



Noticing the interest manifested in your pages 

 of late, upon this subject, I am tempted to give 

 a few facts from my experience with peach on 

 plum in the nursery. As long ago as 1866 my 

 attention was called to an experiment made by 

 Mr. David Miller, formerly of Carlisle, Pa. — a 

 gentleman well known to horticulture — on the 

 Sand Hill Plum, known locally as the Sand Hill 

 Cherry (Prunus pumila), common to the sand 

 hills of Kansas, Nebraska and the Northwest. 

 Mr. Miller had bearing peach trees on this stock 

 at that time, and wrote me very favorably of the 

 result. I made a determined effort to get the 

 pits of this plum, but there was so much con- 

 fusion concerning the name and so much pro- 

 crastination in the minds of those to whom I 

 applied, in neighborhoods where I supposed 

 them to abound, that I did not get any until I 

 went for them myself, and then with difficulty, 

 as no one seemed to know them by any name 

 that I had ever heard. Finally, it was found on 

 Saline Fork, Kansas, after following an old man 

 eeveral miles over the sand hills, in a doubtful 

 way, after what he and his neighbors called the 

 Mountain Cherry. I procured pits enough to 

 make an experiment, in view of their propaga- 

 tion in the nursery. The peach buds set well 

 and they made a healthy growth, but what with 

 the difficulty of getting the pits, the slender 

 growth of the seedlings, and their disposition to 

 drop their foliage before budding time, I was 

 forced to abandon the project. 



I also experimented with Myrobolan as a stock 

 but found it very unsatisfactory. The buds set 

 well, but their growth was very irregular, and 

 whilst there was an occasional tree that seemed 

 healthy the most of them seemed stunted in 

 growth and sickly in foliage. I never tried the 

 peach on Horse Plum or St. Julian, because I 

 could not grow plum trees upon them profitably. 



The subject of the plum stock for the peach held 

 its fascination for me in view of its probable 

 value in exempting the peach from its great foes, 

 the yellows and the borers, and the prospective 

 prices for the young trees should I succeed. 

 Upon taking the management of the nurseries 

 here I noticed the striking similarity of the foli- 

 age and habit of many of the seedlings of the 

 Wild Goose Plum to the peach, and I was in- 

 duced to try the peach upon the Chickasaw of 

 this particular type. After growing trees upon 

 this stock for three years in succession I felt so 

 strongly convinced that I had found the true plum 

 as stock for the peach that we budded over thirty 

 thousand of them in the summer of 1880, and 

 as they have done each year, they grew very 

 perfectly and regularly — a little more stocky and 

 better branched, although not quite as tall as the 

 peach on its own roots. This stock makes hand- 

 some fibrous roots, on our soil, and carries its 

 size up well to the peach, completing a perfect 

 union. 



I have noticed also that this stock is influenced 

 much less by drouth than any plant in the nur- 

 sery. The past summer was remarkable for its 

 great heat and severe drouth, so trying to nur- 

 serymen who had much to bud ; there was not a 

 day in which it could not be budded, and the 

 buds put in lived, whilst buds inserted in peach 

 stocks at the same time perished. It is strictly 

 healthy every way, holding its foliage and con- 

 tinuing its growth until chilled by frost, equaling 

 in this respect the Mahaleb Cherry. After my 

 experiment of the first year with this stock, my 

 expectations of its value were greatly strength- 

 ened by the experience of Mr. John Frazer, our 

 superintendent, who had a thorough education 

 and much practice in this business in England, 

 where the peach is grown exclusively on plum ; 

 and also from his knowledge of a peach tree in 

 Missouri worked on this stock, which is distinc- 

 tively healthy and bears fine crops of fruit. The 

 wood of the peach on plum is more solid, stur- 

 dier and hardier than on peach, as any one will 

 believe who has grown the Apricot on the difler- 

 ent stocks and noted the difference. 



