MORE LIGHT FROM EXPERIENCE. 215 



as peaches, and much finer ones from those deeply rooted 

 trees, with their surface roots undisturbed, than he will ever 

 grow with all his expensive cultivation. In fact, no other 

 kind of large commercial peach growing can now be made to 

 pay. Even were spraying a complete success, the expense 

 of it and of clean culture, with other outlays, and the fre- 

 quent failures from frost, superinduced by the destruction of 

 surface roots, thus weakening the vitality of the trees at the 

 time of setting, will leave little or no profit. The only labor 

 really necessary in a peach orchard, as outlined above, ex- 

 cept gathering the fruit, would be that of shortening-in the 

 ends of all shoots after the fruit was as large as marbles, if 

 the trees were overloaded, and giving an annual free ap- 

 plication of fertilizer when growth starts in the spring. I 

 would here repeat that I know of peach trees from seed, now 

 fourteen years old, in close mowed Bermuda sod, that are in 

 perfect health, and bear annual crops of fine fruit, while cul- 

 tivated trees of that age can nowhere be found here. 



But while the curculio and the frost make the southern 

 peach grower's life a burden, the northern grower is not with- 

 out his troubles. I append an extract from the July 3Oth 

 issue of Cultivator and Country Gentleman : 



PEACHES IN DELAWARE. The article reprinted by you July 23, 

 p. 575, from a New York paper, in regard to "Delaware peaches," 

 savors of an effort by interested parties to bear down the prices of 

 that fruit. It is a fact that the winter and spring were favorable to 

 the production of a good peach crop, and that the orchards set un- 

 usually full is also true ; but that potent causes have intervened to 

 curtail the early promise of a phenomenal yield is also true. In a 

 large measure the "June drop" has decimated the crop, and much 

 more than forstalled any necessity of thinning ; and within the past 

 six weeks the disease known as the " yellows " has invaded orchards 

 heretofore exempt from its ravages, and curtailed the crop to the 

 extent of one-quarter or one-third of what was promised. Heretofore 

 the disease has been rather confined to the northern part of the 

 state, where the production of peaches has become practically a 

 nullity ; but this season it has made gigantic strides southward, and 

 the "center of the peach belt " is only the center of the region remain- 

 ing comparatively unaffected by this plague. With the failure of the 

 Jersey crop and that of the further north regions, there is no reason 

 to believe there will be anywhere near enough to glut the market, 

 and no reason for crying down prices. The question of peach rais- 

 ing on this peninsula is only a question as to whether the peach " yel- 



