FRUIT CULTURE. 777 



or cultivate an orchard after it has borne the first crop. Plowing bruises the roots, enfeebles 

 the trees, and lessens the crop. Enrich the ground by top-dressings, and leave it in a state 

 of rest. The best northern growers say, always keep the ground in good condition, mellow 

 and loose by cultivation, and crop it very frequently with the lighter root and field crops. 

 Both are correct, and it is not difficult to explain the seeming difference of opinion. 



The majority of the peach orchards south of Philadelphia, it will be recollected, grow 

 upon a thin, light soil, previously rather impoverished. In such soils it is necessarily the case 

 that the roots lie near the surface, and most of the food derived by them is from what is 

 applied to the surface or added to the soil. Plowing, therefore, in such soils, wounds and 

 injures the roots, and cropping the ground takes from it the scanty food annually applied or 

 already in the soil, which is not more than sufficient for the orchard alone. In a stronger 

 and deeper soil the roots of the peach tree penetrate farther, and are mostly out of the reach 

 of serious injury by the plow. Instead of losing by being opened and exposed to the air, the 

 heavier soil gains greatly in value by the very act of rendering it more friable, while at the 

 same time it has naturally sufficient heart to bear judicious cropping with advantage rather 

 than injury to the trees. The growth and luxuriance of an orchard in strong land, kept 

 under tillage, is surprisingly greater than the same allowed to remain in sod. The differ 

 ence in treatment, therefore, should always adapt itself to the nature of the soil. In ordinary 

 cases, the duration of peach orchards in the light, sandy soil is rarely more than three years 

 in a bearing state. In a stronger soil, with proper attention to the shortening system of 

 pruning, it may be prolonged to twenty or more years.&quot; 



Peaches should be planted each year, so as to have a succession of young and vigorous 

 trees to take the place of the old ones as they die, or become unfruitful. 



Pruning the Peach. It has been found that peach trees thrive the best, and will 

 produce the most satisfactory results when well pruned each year, the pruning being done 

 very early in the season, before the buds begin to swell. The method of pruning recommended 

 by the most successful fruit growers of the country, is to cut off half of the previous year s 

 growth, called &quot;shortening in&quot; this to be done over the entire outside branches as well as the 

 inner ones. By this means, the young wood, which is that which produces the fruit, is 

 reduced one-half, and the other half left upon the tree receives all the sustenance from the 

 sap, causing the branches to increase in size rapidly, and send out vigorous, thrifty shoots for the 

 next year s bearing. Besides, the other advantages gained are a better-shaped, thickly- 

 branched tree, that is more hardy and vigorous, better able to withstand the severity of the 

 winter; hence, longer lived and more productive, while the fruit is more easily gathered, 

 and the branches are not as liable to be broken down by the winds or the weight of the fruit. 

 Such pruning requires considerable labor and time, where there are large orchards, but it well 

 repays in the result; besides, this labor is not so great an objection, since it comes early in 

 the season when other farm work is not pressing. 



The editor of the Fruit Recorder thus gives his experience with the different methods of 

 pruning, and the result in favor of that above advocated: &quot;We have planted out and 

 grown thousands of peach trees within the past twenty years, and have now growing on our 

 grounds at Palmyra, fully five thousand trees of different ages, and from our experience, we 

 are confident that to have long lived and productive trees, this shortening in process must be 

 attended to timely and regularly. The fruit orchard we set first, of 1,800 trees, we trimmed 

 up the limbs from the body and thinned out the tops, following this up from four to six 

 years, and the result was that these trees grew up tall and spindling the fruit and heavy 

 winds, with snow and sleet, breaking them down and ruining the trees. 



The next orchard we set, we took one-year old trees and cut them right back to within 

 one to two feet of the roots owing to size. These made a low, stocky head the first season, 

 and these heads we shaped by cutting back half to two-thirds the main branches of that sea- 



