14 On Peach Trees. 



dred apple and pear trees, besides the peaches, all of 

 which evince its good effects : a load of forty bushels, 

 after being exposed to the weather from October, till 

 June served for about eighteen hundred trees. 



I have now given the result of my experiments, and 

 will relate to you what has come under my observation. 

 An ingenious farmer, Mr. Ashton, in my neighbour- 

 hood a few years past, planted three hundred peach 

 trees on about three acres of ground ; I saw them last 

 summer, they were very thriving, and he lately in- 

 formed me he had gathered about five hundred bushels 

 of good fruit and sold them readily on the ground at a 

 dollar and fifty cents per bushel, he adopted no other 

 mode to bring them to perfection than ploughing : he 

 informed me that he had raised a crop of Indian com 

 on the ground every year since he planted the trees, 

 and that without manuring, but the ground was in 

 good order when he planted them. Thus, by the trifling 

 labour of planting the trees which he raised from the 

 stone, even without being inoculated, he obtained more 

 money from those three acres than his whole farm 

 would have rented for, and that too without losing one 

 year's crop from the ground, the faithful cultivation of 

 which in procuring other crops insured him success in 

 his crop of fruit. Thus you see the peach when con- 

 stantly cultivated will succeed without lime or any ma- 

 nure ; though in grass grounds I am confident they 

 would not. 



With respect to plumbs and nectarines I have tryed 

 various experiments without success, and though I have 

 about fifty trees which are healthy, blossom well and 

 bring tlieir fruit to a considerable size, yet they all drop 



