SPECIAL THINGS NEEDED BY FRUITS 



PEACH 



Locate a peach orchard on a north slope if you can, but if 

 you can not, do not hesitate to plant in a different exposure. 

 As with apples, the higher elevations produce the finer fruit. 

 The kind of soil makes little difference so long as it is well 

 drained. Peaches will neither grow well nor bear when they 

 have wet feet. Protect from frost as much as possible in the 

 ways discussed in the chapter on frost. Peaches are the most 

 tender of fruit trees. 



Peaches must be cultivated. That is, the soil must receive 

 treatment which will give the trees enough moisture, enough 

 available plant food and sufficient fine earth in which the roots 

 may feed. The time to begin cultivation is a year or more before 

 the trees are planted. All that has been said about planting 

 trees in general, and about planting apple trees in particular, 

 applies to peach-tree planting. In cultivating bearing orchards, 

 do not plow them in the spring until after the blossoms have 

 come. 



When buying peach trees, remember that if you can get one- 

 year-old stock at fifty cents each and two- or three-year-old 

 trees for nothing, you will find the two- or three-year trees the 

 dearer in the end. Young trees should be headed low. Do not be 

 afraid you cannot get the horses under the limbs, as most of 

 them will stand up out of the way during cultivating time. 

 A small mule is better than a big horse in a peach orchard, 

 anyway. 



In pruning peach trees, remember that they bear fruit only 

 on wood a year old that is, only new wood this year will pro- 

 duce fruit next year. Half to two-thirds of each season's growth 

 is the right amount to prune off. Peaches will not produce 

 profit unless both pruning and thinning are regularly done 

 well. The markets always have plenty of little, off-color, and 

 insect-damaged peaches, but never enough good ones. Grading 

 and packing has an extra-large share in securing high prices. 



Growing peaches is a specialist's job. Wonderful successes 

 are to be made by studying the needs and nature of this fruit, 

 while failure to do the right thing almost invariably results in 

 disaster. You must watch every point that has any influence 

 on trees or fruit or price. Under good care, a peach orchard will 

 live twenty-five years or longer; but the safest plan is to cal- 

 culate on getting back the cost of the orchard, and your 

 profit, from three crops, giving the orchard ten years from the 

 time it is planted in which to do this. You are likely to get 

 two or three times this, but you may not. 



Of the varieties, Ray is in a class by itself. Few others are 

 so good, and none surpasses it when considered from the stand- 

 point of all-round excellence. Ray and the following twelve 

 kinds are recommended for a complete orchard, ripening from 

 earliest to latest, in all of the country east of the Alleghanies, 

 from Georgia to Maine: Carman, Mountain Rose, Champion, 

 Moore's Favorite, Belle of Georgia, Reeves' Favorite, Old 



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