156 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



is nothing to offer from the work here as to what the peach needs in the 

 way of plant-food. In the present state of our knowledge, about the best 

 the peach-grower can do is to assume that, if his trees are vigorous, bearing 

 well and making a fair amount of growth, they need no additional plant- 

 food. If they are not in the condition described, look to the drainage, 

 tillage and health of the trees first and the more expensive and less certain 

 fertilization afterward. More and more, in western New York at least, 

 growers are carrying on simple experiments to obtain positive evidence 

 as to what elements of plant-food their trees need. 



The following is an example of such an experiment: (i) Acid phos- 

 phate to give about 50 lbs. of phosphoric acid to the acre; (2) phosphate 

 as above and muriate of potash to give 100 lbs. of potash to the acre; 

 (3) phosphate and muriate as above and nitrate of soda and dried blood 

 to give 50 lbs. of nitrogen per acre ; (4) six tons of stable manure is applied 

 on a fourth plat; (5) a similar plat is left unfertilized for a check. 



No fallacy dies harder than that fertilizers will cure yellows. Nitrate 

 of soda is a great rejuvenator of trees suffering from yellows brought on 

 by sod or lack of tillage but no fact in peach-orcharding has been more 

 thoroughly demonstrated than that neither this fertilizer nor any other 

 will in the least benefit trees suffering from true yellows or from the some- 

 what similar trouble, little-peach. 



Of all fruit-trees, pruning is most used with the peach in regulating 

 the development of the tree. In its early years, we may almost say that 

 the peach " lives by the knife." At all stages of growth the vigorous 

 use of the knife is indispensable in keeping the peach in proper bounds, 

 and yet, rather paradoxically, knife and saw must be used sometime or 

 other in the life of every peach-orchard to stimulate growth or at least 

 to force out new growths. Indispensable as a certain amount of pruning 

 is in training the peach, there is no question in the minds of those who 

 have studied the subject but that it is much more often overdone than 

 underdone. There are no fixed rules in pruning peaches and to discuss 

 in full the diverse theories and practices is not within the range of this 

 exposition. All that can be attempted is briefly to set down what the 

 present practices are in the State. 



In transplanting, the peach suffers severe root-pruning, an operation 

 that it does not bear well. Thus deprived of its roots, the young tree 

 must have its top correspondingly diminished. Two practices are in vogue 

 in New York in this curtailment of the top as the trees go from the nursery 



