132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



kees will appreciate the fruit as the English do, when we 

 understand the growing of them and how to use them ; for 

 a canned Whitesmith is certainly delicious, and a gooseberry 

 tart makes a rare dessert, and has only to be eaten to be 

 appreciated. Grow them under your grapevines or among 

 your trees, as these English varieties seem to flourish best 

 in partial shade. 



Passing to the tree fruits, I will say that my experience 

 with peaches is a past number, and I am only growing plums 

 in a small way. I planted and greAV in health and beauty 

 some thousands of peach trees some fifteen years since, but 

 the extreme cold killed the buds and ruined the trees, so I 

 never obtained a paying crop. But the peach is a grand 

 fruit, and it was a grand sight that met my vision as I looked 

 over J. H. Hale's peach orchard on June 15 last, from the 

 tower erected for observation in the midst of trees covered 

 with their dark-green foliage and loaded with fruit, which I 

 learn has fulfilled every promise, even to filling a basket 

 with thirty-nine Elbertas. It is useless to attempt peach 

 culture unless you have a proper location. The influence of 

 the sunny days in winter is oftentimes as serious as the late 

 frosts of spring. 



The culture of the pear and the apple has come to l)e 

 considered as almost identical. In either case success can- 

 not be assured without cultivation, fertilization and most 

 persistent work early and late with the spray pump and the 

 various fungicides and insecticides that are necessary to 

 keep in check and destroy the numerous enemies of these 

 fruits. Perhai)s in no year have the advantages derived 

 from spraying been more apparent than in the present year 

 of 1897 : first, because of sufiicient rainfall in the eastern 

 section of our country to render the fertilizers available for 

 the growth of both foliage and fruit ; and, second, because 

 of this rainfall fungous growths have been multiplied, and 

 only where the spray pump was persistently used do we 

 find clean, sound finiit. Farmers as a class are negligent in 

 this respect, and we have only to observe the character of 

 the fruit in our local markets to become convinced of the 

 fact ; and the low price at which most of their fruit is being 

 or has been sold in our markets is the result of this neglect. 



