328 



The Peach and Neclarine. 



but most of the buds dropped, and we changed to the cool dry shed, 

 the boxes plunged, and this has been successful. 



" The uncertainty of our climate now, as to the peach crop, com- 

 pelled us to adopt this mode of testing varieties, and we are much 

 pleased with the results thus far. As to the amount of labor re- 

 quired, it would not be possible to state it with any degree of pre- 

 cision, as it is made up of odds and ends." 



RIPENING BY FIRE-HEAT. 



Isaac Pullen, of Hightstown, New Jersey, has adopted the fol- 

 lowing management with much success, and obtained an abundant 

 supply of the earlier sorts by the first day of summer. 



The young tre-es are taken up early in spring, when one year from 

 the bud, the smallest in the rows being selected for this purpose. 

 They are trimmed to a whip and cut back over a foot in height, and 

 placed in nine-inch pots. As the new shoots are thrown out, they 

 are successively pinched in, as often as they have made a growth 

 of two or three inches. In this way they are kept dwarfed .at the 

 same time that they are made 

 to assume a handsome form. 

 The pinching process is con- 

 tinued during the second sea- 

 son, none being allowed to bear 

 until the third, when full crops 

 are taken from them. After the 

 first year they are removed to 

 thirteen-inch or full sized pots. 

 The full grown bearing trees 

 have stems about an inch and a 

 half in diameter and eighteen or 

 twenty inches up to the heads 

 (Fig. 354). This height of bare 

 stem has been found best both 

 in securing the fruit from being 

 soiled by watering, and in assist- 

 ing its more perfect maturity by 

 a full exposure to air and light. 

 The trees are kept under glass during winter, and the thermometer 

 in no instance allowed to go below zero, as the fruit buds are more 

 easily winter-killed than on trees growing in open ground. Artifi- 



354- 



