GROWING PEACH TREES 



PROPAGATION AND PLANTING 



275 



The chapter on propagation gives the general method of grow- 

 ing and budding peach seedlings. In selecting pits, preference is 

 usually given to those from strong-growing, yellow peaches, at 

 least for working on the same colored fruit, while others use pits 

 of the Morris White, others the Strawberry, and others still will 

 use only pits from vigorous seedling trees. In this State the 

 peach is usually so healthy and vigorous, and the "yellows' not 

 known, and less care may be needed in selecting pits; still, there 

 is certainly nothing lost by making every effort for a good stock. 



The hard-shell sweet almond has long been used as a stock 

 for the peach. It is held that it gives a hardier, stronger root, in 

 dry soils especially. 



When it is desired to grow the peach on moister soil than suits 

 its own roots, the St. Julian plum may be used. The Myrobalan 

 has been used to some extent, but experience generally does not 

 favor any plum stock for the peach and our largest propagators 

 have abandoned its use. 



The so-called "peach-almond" has often been urged as a stock 

 for the peach but has been little used, probably because the straight 

 peach and straight almond are so satisfactory and available. It 

 is a fruit having the pit of a peach but the pericarp of an almond, 

 that is tough and tasteless and disposed to split like an almond 

 hull. Early in the fifties a chance hybrid of this sort appeared in 

 the nursery of W. B. West, of Stockton, and its pits were used for 

 nursery seedlings which, when budded to the peach, produced good 

 trees. Trees bearing the peach-almond are found here and there 

 over the State. Mr. Burbank has produced a hybrid of the Wager 

 peach and the Languedoc almond. 



Distance in Orchard. Distance observed in planting peach 

 orchards differs greatly, according to the views of different growers. 

 Regarding the peach as a catch crop to plant between apricot, 

 pear, cherry, walnut, fig or other slower-growing, larger trees, the 

 trees may be set comparatively close ; that is, with the latter trees 

 at thirty to forty feet, and alternate rows of peach planted quin- 

 cunx, and to be removed at the end of ten to fifteen years. If the 

 peach is to have the ground to itself, some planters plant at 

 eighteen feet in equilateral triangles, or twenty, to twenty-four 

 feet on the squares, the present tendency with the peach, as with 

 other trees, being to give more room than was the custom a few 

 years ago. 



Age of Trees. In planting peach orchards yearling trees are 

 generally used, although far more are planted in dormant bud 

 than of any other kind of fruit trees. The reason for this is easily 

 found in the disposition of the peach to make a tree the first }/ear 



