No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 647 



have, it is simply astonisliing. Some of the nurserymen are doing 

 it in a small Avay, and others who will do it in the future will simply 

 want the buds from the best bearing trees they can hnd. There wil] 

 be a greater loss in propagation, but it will be a better tree, and the 

 man that is willing to pay for that tree will get his money's worth, 

 and the man who thinks he cau get off by buying lower priced trees, 

 will make a mistake. You cannot get too good a tree for the foun- 

 dation of a peach orchard. I used to be in the nursery business, and 

 1 am onto their curves. I am an orchardist now. A lot of us are 

 careless in handling our trees. 1 have shipped out in years gone 

 by a thousand good trees, five hundred to John Smith, five hundred 

 to Jones, all giowu in the same lot, and in a few months time I 

 have a glorious letter from John Smith, praising me for the quality 

 of the tree, vigor of groAvth, and so forth, and a fault-finding letter 

 from the other fellow; he never was so stuck in his life; yet he filled 

 the holes full of good rich manure when he jjlanted them, but they 

 had failed. Get the best trees you can get; pay Avhat it costs to 

 grow them and a profit on top, but don't expect the nuiseryman to 

 replace them, because you have been careless and they don't live. If 

 he cau ijrove they were properly packed and handled, it is up to 

 you to make them grow if you can. The culture of peach trees, the 

 thorough culture, the frequent culture of all the land in the orchard, 

 is more important to the peach than any trees that grow. There is 

 no tree that responds so quickly to a thorough cultivation or feed- 

 ing, or none that goes back so quickly for lack of it, as the peach ; 

 therefore, the early months of the season are the months to cultivate 

 the peach orchard. And the growth of any other crops, everything 

 after the second season, is dangeious. I know there are men who 

 are good gardeners; who are able to grow^ clover liberally and plow 

 under, and by intensive cultivation can grow garden crops for a 

 series of years, but as a general peach orchard cultivation, give the 

 harrow, cultivator and plow and horse and mule an opportunity to 

 keep the ground stirred, and you will make the best orchard wathout 

 any question whatever. The question of feeding the orchards well, 

 we have had various notions about. At one time Ave thought nothing 

 but bone and potash would make a solid, substantial tree, and high 

 grade fruit, and no stable manure Avhatsoever. We have learned in 

 later Aears that some varieties need a liberal amount of nitrogenous 

 food. Take, for instance, the Waddell, Hills Chili and Crosby, in- 

 clined to overbear, at all times hardy in bud, setting an enormous 

 amount of fruit, thin them as much as you may, and the chance is, 

 they won't be thin enough. Those trees are rather weak in tree 

 growth, and a liberal amount of nitrogen or stable manure will 

 benefit them, but a vigorous growing variety, the Belle of Georgia, 

 the Carmen and Champion, would be ruined under the came condi- 

 tions, on the same soil, by a liberal use of stable manure, but as a 

 broad, general i)roposition, heavy applications of potash and phos- 

 phate fertilizer in one form or the other, give the best results. For 

 many years, I depended on fine ground bone as a source of phos- 

 phorous. The Iqst few years Ave are getting some Avonderful results 

 from the use of basic slag, but I am not prepaied to tell you today 

 to use basic slag on your orchard. I am not sure but what it is the 



