592 



THE PEACH. 



from the latest ripening varieties, or procure them from districts of the 

 country where the disease is not known. 



3. So far we have aimed only at procuring a healthy stock of trees. 

 The most important matter remains to be stated — how to preserve them, 

 in a healthy state. 



The answer to this is emphatically as follows : pursue steadily, from 

 the first bearing year, the shortening-in system of pruning already ex- 

 plained. This will at once secure your trees against the possibility of 

 over-bearing and its consequences, and maintain them in vigor and pro- 

 ductiveness for a long time.* It will, in short, effectually prevent the 

 Yellows where it does not already exist in the tree. To whoever will 

 follow these precautions, pursue this mode of cultivation, and adopt at 

 the same time the remedy for the Borer already suggested, we will con- 

 fidently insure healthy, vigorous, long-lived trees, and the finest fruit. 

 Will any reasonable man say that so fine a fruit as the peach does not 

 fully merit them ? 



Whether the system of shortening-in and careful culture will pre- 

 vent the breaking out of the Yellows, when constitutionally latent in 

 the tree, we will not yet undertake to say. In slight cases of the dis- 

 ease we believe that it may. Of one thing, however, we are certain : it 

 has hitherto failed entirely to reclaim trees in which the malady had 

 once broken out. Neither do we know of any well-attested case of its 

 cure, after this stage, by any means whatever. Such cases have indeed 

 been reported to us, and published in the journals, but, when investi- 

 gated, they have proved to be trees suffering by the effects of the borer 

 only. 



A planter of peach-trees must, even with care, expect to see a few 

 cases of Yellows occasionally appear. The malady is too widely ex- 

 tended to be immediately vanquished. Occasionally trees having the 

 constitutional taint will show themselves where least suspected ; but 

 when the peach is once properly cultivated these will every day become 

 more rare, until the original health and longevity of this fruit-tree is 

 again established. 



The Curl is the name commonly given to a malady which often at- 

 tacks the leaves of the peach-tree. It usually appears in the month of 

 May or June. The leaves curl up, become thickened and swollen, with 

 hollows on the under and reddish swellings on the upper side, and 

 finally, after two or three weeks, fall off. They are then succeeded by a 

 new and healthy crop of foliage. Although it does not appear mate- 

 rially to injure either the tree or the crop, yet it greatly disfigures it for 

 a time. 



Innumerable seedlings have been produced in this country, and 

 some of them are of the highest excellence. It is very desirable to re- 

 duce the collection of peaches to reasonable limits, because, as this fruit 

 neither offers the same variety of flavor nor the extent of season as the 

 apple and pear, a moderate number of the choicest kinds, ripening from 



* The following- remarks, directly in point, are from. Loudon's last work : 

 " The effect of shortening the shoots of the peach is not merely to throw more 

 sap into the fruit, but to add vigor to the tree generally by increasing the 

 power of the roots relatively to the branches. The peach being a short-lived 

 tree, it has been justly remarked by Mr. Thompson, were it allowed to expend all its 

 accumulated sap every year, it would soon exhaust itself and die of old age." — Su- 

 burban Horticulturist. 



