REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON GARDENS. 283 



large cities. . . . Many growers have orchards of from 

 10,000 to 100,000 trees of different ages, and send to market in 

 good seasons as many bushels of fruit from the bearing trees." 



The following extract is as important now as it was when writ- 

 ten twenty-seven years ago. 



"The very great facility with which the peach grows in this 

 country, and the numerous crops it produces, almost without care, 

 have led to a carelessness of cultivation which has greatly en- 

 feebled the stock, and, as we shall presently show, has in many 

 places produced a disease peculiar to this country. This renders 

 it necessary to give some additional care and attention to the cul- 

 tivation of the peach ; and with very trifling care this delicious 

 fruit may be produced in great abundance for many successive 

 years." " Garden and Forest," 1894, p. 467, says, " Some 

 nine thousand acres of laud in Western New York are devoted 

 to the peach iudustry. . . . Professor Bailey thinks 

 that the peach industry, more than any other pomological inter- 

 est, suffers peculiarly from careless methods. The first error 

 is lack of cultivation ; the second, inattention to borers and yel- 

 lows ; the third is neglect to thin the fruit, and the fourth is 

 carelessness in marketing." Then follow excellent suggestions 

 on Locations and Soils, Cultivating and Fertilizing, and Pruning 

 and Thinning Fruit. On this last point we copy the remarks, 

 which are practical and very useful. — " No two peaches should 

 be alloAved to develop nearer than five inches apart. No work of 

 the orchard pa^'s better than thinning the fruit, either in the price 

 which the remaining produce brings or in the energy which is 

 saved to the tree. "When regularly thinned the tree bears every 

 year unless injured by frost. The fruit must be picked sooner or 

 later, and the work is more easily done in June than in Septem- 

 ber, so that no labor is lost. The thinning should be delayed 

 until the fruit is the size of the end of a man's thumb, and by this 

 time the ' June drop ' has occurred, and the fruit can readily be 

 seen." The points suggested in regard to marketing are so well 

 known to all cultivators that it is unnecessarj' to reproduce them ; 

 suffice it to say that too much care cannot be exercised in handling 

 and properly packing ; crushed and bruised fruit is not attractive 

 to the purchaser. 



