118 The Western Pomologist and Gardener. 1872 



standingly, as I have had some experience in peach growing. Some advocate the let alone 

 system in cultivation. I advocate the cultivation of a peach orchard as thoroughly as 

 that of a corn-field, and for the same reason, to make it grov?. If it is a ver)' dry season 

 cultivate as late as the first of August; an ordinary, or a wet season, until the first of July. 

 My reason for this is, we must keep the peach in as healthy and go(3d growing condition 

 as late as we can, say the first of October. 



" Oh, say you, we do not believe in the late growth of the peach. Neither do I, in the 

 second growth. If you do not cultivate, and keep your trees growing, they will stop 

 about the middle of July. When that is done the terminal bud is formed, and the growth 

 is stopped. After lying dormant a month or six weeks, our warm fall rains come on, the 

 sap again flows freelj', the tree starts to grow, and the fruit buds being easier to start than 

 the terminal bud, they are forced or started. Consequently, when the first severe cold 

 snap comes, they are all killed. If you keep the tree growing, so that the terminal bud 

 will not be formed until the danger of a second growth is past, or the first light frost, there 

 will be no danger of the fruit buds being forced or started. 



If the fruit buds are not started in the fall they will stand very severe cold. I have 

 known them to stand twenty degrees below zero, while buds which had been started were 

 killed with a much less degree of cold, even when only down to zero. 



Some recommend poor soil for the peach. I would like to know what they mean. I 

 wonder if some of them would not get fat if they were set down to a table with no grub 

 on it — (I don't mean peach grub, but food.) A peach wants food, rich food, and plenty 

 of it. It wants rich soil. There is hardly a fruit tree which takes up and consumes food 

 taster, or more of it, than the peach, and we have got to keep up the supply. 



The cry is, that the peach is short-lived. We would all be short-lived if we were 

 deprived of food. Some will say that fellow is moon-eyed. Better be moon-eyed than 

 sun-struck. Go over the country, and see the weakly, consumptive, sickly trees ; they 

 look as if they were all starved to death, and all wore corsets. Feed 3'our trees to keep 

 them in a healthy and growing condition. 



As to the kind of food for the peach. After growing in good soil four years, I would 

 advocate putting around each half a bushel of ashes, half a bushel slaked lime, and one 

 quart of salt, well mixed ; spread it equally around the tree, extending out six or eight 

 feet ; then fork in ; do this in the fall, and once in two years thereafter, and you will find 

 that your trees are healthy, and will bear larger and finer fruit, and live longer than any 

 member of the Adams county Horticultural Society. I can show good, healthy trees that 

 are twenty-three years old, of the Old Mixon Free, Old Mixon Cling, Stump the World, 

 Early York. Hay worth, and some others, and one tree thirty years old. A peach does not 

 get rightly into bearing until it is twelve or fifteen years old, yet some have got a notion 

 into their heads that that is about the time for them to be used for firewood. I sold from 

 three Old Mixon Free trees standing side by side, one season, when they were nineteen 

 years old, sixty dollars worth of peaches to one man. The poor soil and non-cultivate 

 advocates -would have had them among the things that were." 



Tbe Blight.— Is It Caused by Sudden and Severe Freezing? 



Bt the AagociATE Editor. 



As the Corresponding Editor has advanced some theories on blight which we think 

 cannot be sustained, we believe it a duty we owe our readers to reply to them. We do 

 not pretend to know as much as some about its peculiar manifestations, but we have a 

 few facts that may throw some light upon the subject. 



If Uiyht is caused by the sudden and severe freezing of the wood, it is strange that 

 young trees are not as much affected as older trees, and it is yet more strange that it 

 should affect those which were not frozen at all. This theory of both cold and heat pro- 

 ducing blight is too much like blowing cold or hot to suit the occasion. For he says, 

 " If, then, the first kind of blight is produced by the freezing of the sap, so as to rupture 

 the cells by its expansion into crystals, so also is the second, or sun-scald blight, produced 



