34 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



"But how about an orchard? My soil is light, black prairie, 

 partly covered with live oak and mesquite. My orchard proper is 

 young. This is its third year, and hence I am cultivating three rows 

 of potatoes or corn in the middles. This leaves the trees on the 

 middle of an eight-foot bed that has not been plowed. The past two 

 weeks we had two frosts, thermometer barely to thirty-two degrees. 

 I have thirty varieties of peaches in my orchard. Excepting some 

 Alexanders next to the cow lot, the fruit is entirely destroyed ; apri- 

 cots also. 



44 In one of my chicken yards, which has never been cultivated, I 

 have five peach trees and plum trees, all in full bloom. I never saw 

 heavier crops of fruit, and but little damage by frost. If we have 

 no more frost I will have to unload the trees to fully one-half. 

 Moreover, these same trees last year bore heavy crops, despite the 

 cold weather, that destroyed almost the entire fruit crop of all this 

 section. In my yard I have five peach trees, one Prunus Simoni, one 

 quince, three pear trees and several plums not at all injured by the 

 frost. These all bore heavily last year except the pear and quince, 

 which are too young yet to bear, and are again full. Two neigh- 

 bors had plowed their orchards and lost all their fruit ; one neighbor 

 had not plowed, and his fruit is but little injured. 



" Is not this an object lesson well worthy of our serious study ? 

 From it I would deduce the following rule for cultivation : Never 

 put a plow into the orchard until all danger of frost is over. 



4 'Now, don't understand me to say that frost or freeze cannot 

 destroy the fruit on non- cultivated trees, but only that an orchard 

 freshly plowed is far more susceptible to freeze and frost than un- 

 plowed soil. My orchard was plowed at least three weeks before the 

 frost, for the Irish potatoes were just beginning to come up. 



44 Live, study, learn !" 



The true cause of the plowed trees losing their fruit was 

 the loss of a large quantity of their surface feeding-roots, up- 

 on which the setting and development of the fruit largely 

 depend. 



