No. 12. 



Culture of the Peach Tree. 



367 



ploujjhed, and from thirty to forty busliels of 

 lime are sprcml upon it to the acre. The 

 trees of like kinds, for the convenience of 

 picking, are then set out in rows at dis- 

 tances varying from twenty to thirty feet 

 apart, according to the strength of the soil ; 

 a crop of corn is then put in and cultivated 

 in the usual way, and this is done succes- 

 sively for ihree years; by this time the trees 

 begin to bear. The cultivation of the corn 

 being the proper tillage for the trees, and 

 this crop amply paying for all investment in 

 trees, &c. After the trees commence bear- 

 ing, no other crop of any kind should ever 

 be grown among them, as I have known two 

 rows of potatoes between a row of peach 

 trees not only to affect the fruit, but seriously 

 injure the trees; but they should be regu- 

 larly ploughed some three or four times in 

 the season, just as if the corn crop was con- 

 tinued. So obnoxious in our country is the 

 peach tree to the worm, or borer — the cEge- 

 ria exitiosa — that each tree in the orchard 

 should be examined twice a year, summer 

 and fall — say in June and October — by re- 

 moving the earth down to the roots, and 

 killing with a pruning-knife every intruder 

 — then scraping the injured bark and re- 

 moving the glue. Thus exposed, they 

 should be left for a few days, when the 

 earth should again be replaced with a hoe. 

 The limbs should be only moderately pruned 

 or thinned out, so as to admit the sun and 

 air, avoiding in the operation leaving forks, 

 which incline ihem to split when burthened 

 with fruit. When the peaches ripen, they 

 should be carefully picked from step-ladders, 

 seven to eight feet high, into small hand- 

 baskets, holding one peck each. Our ope- 

 rators for this purpose are both men and wo- 

 men, who earn from fifty to seventy-five 

 cents a day, besides being ybimt?. These 

 baskets are gently emptied into the regular 

 market baskets, which are all marked with 

 the owner's name and strewed along the 

 whole line of orchard to be picked. As 

 these are filled they are put into spring 

 wagons, holding from thirty to sixty baskets, 

 and taken to the wharf, -or landing, where 

 there is a house, shed or awning, for the 

 purpose of assorting them, each kind by 

 itself, which is into prime and cullings — the 

 prime being distinguished not only by their 

 size and selection, but also by a handful of 

 peach leaves scattered through the top. 

 They are then put on board the boats in 

 tiers, separated by boards between, to keep 

 them from injury, and so reach their des- 

 tined market. We consider a water com- 

 munication from the orchards, or as near as 

 may be, most essential, as all land carriage 

 more or less bruises or destroys the fruit 



Our roads through the orchards and to the 

 landings are all kept plougiicd and harrowed 

 down smooth and even. The baskets for 

 marketing the peaches are generally ob- 

 tained in New Jersey at twenty-five to thir- 

 ty-seven dollars and fifty cents per hundred. 

 With trifling modifications our culture and 

 practice may be made to suit not only the 

 Southern but the South- Western States. I 

 may here, perhaps, properly remark, that 

 the average life of our trees is from nine to 

 twelve years, when properly cared for and 

 protected as I have described ; that the 

 two great and devastating enemies the trees 

 have to contend against are the peach worm 

 and the yellows; the first readily yielding 

 to the knife and the treatment of semi-an- 

 nual examination; the latter being a con- 

 stitutional, consumptive, or inarasmatic dis- 

 ease, for which no other remedy is as yet 

 known or to be practiced but extirpation 

 and destruction. *There are many theories 

 and some practice recorded on this, by far 

 the most destructive enemy of the peach 

 tree. I may hereafter give my own views 

 on this particular and obscure disease. I 

 concur, however, with Mr. Downing, of 

 Newburg, that the great and prevailing dis- 

 position of the peach tree in our climate is 

 to over-production of fruit in favourable sea- 

 sons. Our remedy for this is carefully to 

 thin it oft' by plucking all those that touch, 

 or are within two or three inches of each 

 other, when the size of hickory nuts, which 

 are thrown into some running stream or 

 into the hog-pens to be devoured. This 

 mode "of heading in," or pruning one half 

 of the producing buds, is new to me, but 

 which I have just tried upon my garden 

 trees in the city, and will be able to speak 

 of experimentally, hereafter. With us in 

 Delaware, as everywhere else, the peach 

 tree succeeds best in a gocd soil. That 

 preferred is a rich sandy loam, with clay. 

 Many of my finest trees and choicest fruits 

 are grown in a loose and stony soil. The 

 trees should never be set out in wet, low, or 

 springy situations, and for the same reasons, 

 high and rolling ground should be selected 

 for your plantations, and for the additional 

 circumstance that they are less obnoxious 

 to early frosts. 



I may further remark, for the benefit of 

 those desirous to pay some attention to the 

 cultivation of peaches — and ivho should not 

 he? — that considerable additions of new and 

 valuable varieties, native as well as foreign, 

 are annually being made to those already 

 known among us — many of them very fine. 

 I have now several hundred raised from pits, 

 imported for me by N. Frazier, Esq , Buenos 

 Avrean Consul, of Philadelphia, and long a 



