48 The Principles of Fruit-growing 



the growing of tender or early-blooming fruit should be 

 chosen with reference to its immunity from disastrous 

 winter temperatures and untimely frosts, it should also 

 be said that climate is often held responsible for failures 

 that are chargeable to ignorance or neglect. This is 

 particularly well illustrated in the perishing peach-grow- 

 ing of some parts of the North. 



The date of last "killing frost," however, may mean 

 httle to the grower of orchard fruits, for fruit-buds or 

 even expanding flowers are not destroyed by frosts that 

 kill tender plants on the ground. In a subsequent dis- 

 cussion (Chap. VIII), the degree of cold that fruit-buds 

 may withstand is given in some detail. Growers attribute 

 to frost injuries that may have been caused by cold rains 

 or to long-continued cold weather at blooming-time. 

 Good phenological studies need to be made, whereby 

 there shall be complete correlation of weather phenomena 

 and vegetation phenomena. 



Frost data need to be worked out for every state and 

 province, for the risk is great in every one of them. The 

 imminence of this risk enforces the importance of rein- 

 forcing the fruit business with the raising of other crops 

 and products, and also the necessity of choosing one's 

 locality carefully. Frost records must be compiled, to exhibit 

 the average last killing frost, or the last freeze, in spring, 

 the latest date of such freeze, the average first killing 

 depression in autumn, the first killing temperature that 

 has occurred in any year, and the length of the crop sea^ 

 son. (See for example. Bull. No. 5 of the U. S. Weather 

 Bureau on "Frost Data of the United States," 1911.) 

 We shall eventually work out such records minutely for 

 small regions, for the farmer will find the information 

 of value in proportion as it applies to his farm. 

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