PROPAGATION OF THE PEACH 243 



working on the same colored fruits, while others use pits of the 

 Morris White, others the Strawberry, and others still will use only 

 pits from vigorous seedling trees. In this State the peach is usually 

 so healthy and vigorous, and the "yollows" not known, that less 

 care may be needed in selecting pits ; still there is certainly nothing 

 lost by making every effort for a good stock. 



The hand-shell and sweet almonds have long been used as a stock 

 for the peach. It is held that they give a hardier, stronger root, in 

 dry coarse soils especially, but neither have been largely used. 



When it is desired to grow the peach on moister soil than suits 

 its own roots, the St. Julian plum may be used. The Myrobalan 

 has been used to some extent, but experience generally does not 

 favor any plum stock for the peach and our largest propagators 

 have abandoned its use. 



The so-called "peach-almond" has often been urged as a stock 

 for the peach but has been little used, as nurserymen claim that the 

 growth of its seedlings are less uniform and satisfactory than the 

 straight peach and straight almond. It is a fruit having the pit of a 

 peach but the perricarp of the almond, that is tough and tasteless 

 and disposed to split like an almond hull. Early in the fifties a 

 chance hybrid of this sort appeared in the nursery of W. B. West, 

 of Stockton, and its pits were used for nursery seedlings which, 

 when budded to the peach, produced good trees. Trees bearing the 

 peach-almond are found here and there all over the State. Mr. 

 Burbank produced a hybrid of the Wager peach and the Languedoc 

 almond. 



Distance in Orchard. Distance observed in planting peach 

 orchards differs greatly, according to the views of different growers. 

 Regarding the peach as a catch crop to plant between apricot, pear, 

 cherry, walnut, fig or other slow-growing, larger trees, the trees 

 may be set comparatively close ; that is, with the latter trees at 

 thirty to forty feet, and alternate rows of peach to be removed at 

 the end of ten to fifteen years. If the peach is to have the ground 

 to itself, some planters plant at eighteen feet in equilateral tri- 

 angles, or twenty to twenty-four feet on the squares, the present 

 tendency of the peach, as with other trees, being to give more room 

 than was the custom a few years ago. 



Age of Trees. In planting peach orchards yearling trees are 

 generally preferred, though June buds are freely used and more are 

 planted in dormant bud than of any other kind of fruit trees. The 

 reason for this is easily found in the disposition of the peach to 

 make a tree the first year from the bud. It springs almost at once 

 into a full outfit of laterals. Some growers employ this disposition 

 to form a head the first year in the nursery. When the bud has 

 grown out eighteen inches, pinch it off at the top and force out lat- 

 erals, which make long growth the same season. When planted out 

 in orchard the following winter, cut back to ten or twelve inches. 

 In this way anyone can get a yearling with the equivalent of a two- 

 year-old head on it. The common practice is, however, to let the 



