PEACHES, PLUMS, CHERRIES, AND APRICOTS. 551 



soil with root crops and top dressings is necessary to the per- 

 fection of all fruits^ and to the fruitfulness, health, and longer 

 life of all fruit trees. 



The peach requires a light, sandy, warm soil. If too sandy 

 an occasional top dressing of peat, clay, muck, or loam will 

 amend it. 



The pruning of the peach is, after the preparation of the soil, 

 the most important part of its culture. 



The sap tends more strongl)'' to the extremities of the shoots 

 than in any other fruit, so that left to itself the peach forms a 

 long stem and long scraggy branches ; while north of Virginia 

 it should never be more than twelve feet high, (eight feet is still 

 better,) with its lower limbs not more than three feet from the 

 ground. 



This height and shape is easily secured by what is termed, 

 shortening in, pruning. For this purpose pruning shears are 

 much better than the knife. The fruit is borne only on wood 

 of the last year's growth, and consequently another great object 

 always to be kept in view, in pruning the peach, is to keep each 

 part of the tree furnished with an equally distributed number 

 of bearing shoots. Take a yearling tree in the spring, and cut 

 it back to within two or three feet of the ground. Below this 

 cut a number of shoots will spring, of which three (or at 

 the most four) are to be allowed to grow to form the main 

 branches. All other shoots appearing during the season mzisi he 

 rubbed off. The next spring these three shoots should be cat 

 back about half their length. From the shoots that will soo.u 

 appear upon these shoots select two or three, and rub off all 

 others from both stem and branches. This process is to be con- 

 tinued every year, by cutting off at least half tne growth of the 

 preceding year. Prune just beyond a bud as directed on page 

 532. The fourth year, and often the third, trees thus treated will 



