FRUIT TREES. Chap. I. 5 



inches apart in rows marked by a garden line. They put the almonds in them three or four 

 inches deep at most, cover them with earth with the point of a dibble, & tamp down the 

 earth gently by foot, assuming that it's not moist enough to hold together by itself. The 

 seed germs won't take long to sprout, & after the end of August or mid-September of the 

 same year, a portion of the young almond trees will be sturdy enough to be dormant bud 

 grafted for dwarf trees. The weaker ones will be bud grafted in the next or in the third 

 year. 



It's reputed that almond trees of Provence with soft wood are subject to 

 gummosis, & that peach trees grafted onto stocks derived from bitter almonds produce a 

 lot of wood & little fruit. I myself always have tried to procure local almonds, the largest 

 ones that are sweet & fresh, & that have hard wood. Bear in mind that seeds thriving in 

 our climate produce trees that are less delicate than those grown from seeds coming from 

 a warmer climate, & that trees produced by seeds from almond trees with thick & hard 

 wood are hardier than the others. Lacking precise data, I generally hold to these views. 

 Nevertheless, I've used almonds from Provence successfully in years when the ones in 

 our own gardens have completely failed. Some nurserymen claim that seeds must not be 

 planted in the same ground that produced them, & they've shown that grafts don't succeed 

 well on stocks grown this way. I have no evidence for that. 



II. Pits of peaches, plums, & apricots are treated the same way as almonds. 

 They're allowed to germinate in sand, and they're put in the ground the same distances 

 apart and at the same depth. Peach tree stocks for the most part are strong enough to be 

 dormant bud grafted for dwarf trees after the end of August of the same year. 



