94 THE PEACH. 



tricity of the atmospliere, and the exposure of all things to the 

 unbroken sweep of the winds, have wrought a change in the 

 climate of the country not altogether favorable either to animal 

 or vegetable life. When we, as agriculturists, better understand 

 the influence of frequent belts of timber, composed of evergreen 

 and deciduous trees, upon the life and health of ourselves, of our 

 stock, of our crops and our orchards, they will then be esteemed 

 as necessary and valued as highly as any part of the farm, and 

 our crops of fruit will be less frequently injured or destroyed by 

 sudden changes of temperature and predatory tribes of insects. 



The soil must be warm, dry and porous, else the Peach will 

 not thrive. In a stiff retentive clay the tree will not grow, nor 

 in any cold, damp soil. The tops and sides of gentle slopes are 

 usually more favorable than the bottoms of ravines and valleys. 

 An abundance of lime in the soil is conducive to the health of 

 the tree, and a regular dressing of wood ashes has always been 

 found to be highly beneficial. 



Peach trees may be jDlanted twelve feet apart each way, and 

 should be annually pruned back or shortened in. By this is 

 usually meant the cutting off, every spring, of about one-third 

 of the length of the previous summer's growth, and the thinning 

 out of such twigs as may have become useless, or overcrowded. 

 By this method of pruning, the trees will be kept in a neat, com- 

 pact form, less exposed to injury from the winds, the branches 

 less liable to be broken by any cause, and the tree more healthy 

 and fruitful. If, however, instead of cutting away in spring one- 

 third of the previous summer's growth, the growing shoots were 

 checked by pinching the ends in summer, the wood would be bet- 

 ter ripened, the tree kept more easily in shape, and the spring 

 pruning reduced to a mere occasional thinning of superfluous 

 shoots. We are fully persuaded that, in our Canadian climate, 

 the more we control the form of our trees by summer pinching 

 and the less of knife pruning we can get on with, not only of 

 the Peach but of all our fruit trees, the more healthy and longer 

 lived our trees will be. 



