64 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



With the sour cherries you get a strong root system, and 

 get a hardy tree. If you get the hardy trees, there is a glo- 

 rious opening for sweet cherries in every market of every 

 country town. Why, the farmers of Massachusetts want to 

 buy cherries ! I don't believe there is a family in Massachu- 

 setts that would sell their cherries at any price, even to their 

 nearest neighbor ; why, they want them themselves. And 

 so it goes on . Get sweet cherry trees that are budded on 

 Mazzard stocks. 



Then peaches : you hear about what you can't do here in 

 Massachusetts, but 3'ou can grow peaches profitably in every 

 county in the State except most of Berkshire, and in some 

 sections of Berkshire you can grow beautiful peaches, and 

 you have got men within 10 miles of this hall growing 

 peaches as fine as are gi'own on the earth, and I suspect they 

 are doing well financially. Somebody will say, "Yes; but 

 they have thousands and thousands of acres in Georgia 

 and Texas, from which they deliver here." Yes; but they 

 are not the ones allowed to ripen to full maturity. Every 

 town in Massachusetts has people who want to buy peaches ; 

 and no matter how many they have had from the south, or 

 how many months the}^ have run over, thc}^ will buy yours 

 from you right fresh from the tree. Don't plant them in 

 valleys or on wet land, but on the hills. By taking your 

 semi-elevated hill land, not too dry or too wet, and thor- 

 oughly tilling it and planting a few varieties, you can cover 

 the season and deliver the fruit to the grocer, or the whole- 

 saler, or the family itself, for more than two months, or about 

 that, and find it profitable. You must have the trees headed 

 down low, as this San Jose scale has forced you to spray 

 all your peaches and other fruit trees. You want the tree 

 as close to the ground as possible, so you can work over it. 

 You will need to thin your fruit, and you want to harvest 

 your fruit ; and if it is a low-headed tree, you can do your 

 work and save 50 or 75 per cent of large fruit. The thin- 

 ning of the fruit will result in more beautiful fruit, will re- 

 sult in larger fruit, will result in a higher-flavored fruit. 

 Some people think a peach is a peach, and will take a 

 standard variety and think it is going to be the same. 



