114 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



strong initial spring growth. The orchard should then be let 

 alone, mowing occasionally whatever growth comes, or it 

 could be put down to Bermuda or other lawn grass. Thus 

 treated, all peach trees will broaden out and cover themselves 

 with short fruit-spurs a few inches long, and somewhat longer 

 ones on top ; but the check of bearing and from the mowed 

 sod will prevent the annual growth of long, sappy canes, 

 which on cultivated trees must be cut back to prevent over- 

 bearing, as well as keep the trees from growing so high as to 

 compel the use of ladders in gathering the fruit. Why ex- 

 haust the vitality of the trees, as well as incur expense, by 

 growing useless wood ? Of course, after a season of exces- 

 sive rains the next year thinning of the fruit will be neces- 

 sary, in fact, could be practiced with benefit every spring ; but 

 it is surprising, where the natural equilibrium between the 

 tops and roots of a peach tree is maintained, what heavy 

 crops it will mature to good marketable size on good ground 

 without thinning at all. 



The Edwards' Elberta seedling in a neighbor's yard here, 

 standing on ground never broken, last year bore four meas- 

 ured bushels of fruit, and from it I selected the peaches that 

 went to Los Angeles and back, and which the editor of the 

 Pacific Fruit World pronounced to be "magnificent." The 

 accompanying illustration also shows two rows of Elberta that 

 are twenty two years old and have not been pruned, cultivated 

 or fertilized for the last eight years. I am standing by the tree 

 that grew the peaches that went to Rochester, N. Y., and 

 back, but, as the past summer was very wet, it will be noted 

 that the top shoots have pushed unusually high. However, 

 whenever the trees get so high that the fruit cannot be gathered 

 from the ground, the tops should be again cut back. Those 

 two rows ought to have the fruit thinned this season, but the 

 owner says, "They have never laid down on me yet and they 

 will have to stand it." I have watched those trees six years 

 and never saw a rotten peach on any of them. The ground 

 is perfectly bare beneath, all grass having long ago been 

 shaded out and replaced with the decaying leaves, under 

 which, if the earth be scratched ever so little, the feeding 



