PEACH-TREE. 



237 



roots being strong. Let no kind of beasts into a peach- 

 orchard, hogs excepted^ for fear of wounding the trees ; as 

 the least wound will greatly injure the tree, by draining 

 away that substance which is the life thereof: although the 

 tree may live many years, the produce is not so great ; nei- 

 ther is the fruit so good. After the old stock is cut away, 

 the third year after transplanting, the sprouts or scions will 

 grow up all round the old stump, from four to six in num- 

 ber ; no more will come to maturity than the old stump can 

 support and nourish ; the remainder will die before ever 

 they bear fruit. These may be cut away, taking care 

 not to wound any part of any stock, or the bark. The 

 sprouts growing all round the old stump, when loaded with 

 fruit, will bend, and rest on the ground in every direction, 

 without injuring any of them, for many years, all of them 

 being rooted in the ground as though they had been planted. 

 The stocks ./ill remain tough, and the bark smooth, for 

 twenty years and upwards. If any of the sprouts or trees 

 from the old stump should happen to splitofF, or die, cut them 

 away ; they will be supplied from the ground by young 

 trees, so that you will have trees from the same stump for 

 one hundred years, as I believe. I now have trees, thirty- 

 six, twenty, ten, five, and down to one year old, all from the 

 same stump. The young trees, coming up, after any of the 

 old trees split off or die, and are cut away, will bear fruit 

 the second year : but this fruit will not ripen so easily as 

 the fruit on the old trees from the same stem. Three 

 years after the trees are cut off by the ground, they will be 

 suinciently large and bushy to shade the ground, so as to 

 prevent grass of any kind from matting or binding the sur- 

 face so as to injure the trees; therefore ploughing is use- 

 less, as well as injurious ; useless, because nothing can be 

 raised in the orchard, by reason the trees will shade all the 

 ground, or nearly so; injurious, because either the roots, 

 stock, or branches will be wounded ; neither is it necessary 

 ever to manure peach-trees, as manured trees will always 

 produce less and worse fruit than trees that are not ma- 

 nured ; although by manuring your peach-trees they will 

 grow larger, and look greener and thicker in the boughs, 

 and cause a thicker shade, yet on them will grow very little 

 fruit, and that little will be of a very bad kind — generally 

 looking as green as the leaves, even when ripe, and later 

 than those that have never been manured."'^ 



* This assertion is directly contrary to the experience of a g-entleman in New 

 Jersey, who has remarkably fine peaches, regularly manures his trees every 



