52 
Marc®, 1889. 
ORCH RRD GARDE N 
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Orchard Notes. 
In planting the peach, quince or apple, 
see that no borers are present. Take a dull 
knife and scrape the bark at the root care- 
fully to see if any discolored spot appears, 
if so, search for a borer beneath and remove 
it. The writer set 2000 peach trees five years 
ago and took as many as seven borers from 
a tree, but few having none. The work was 
so thoroughly done and no orchards being 
near to furnish mature insects to impreg- 
nate them, that there has not been a single 
borer found, or that can now be found in 
the entire 2000 trees. 
The early apples, peaches and the like 
should always be planted near the dwelling, 
and the plot made a run for poultry, or the 
trees protected and the ground used for a 
run for hogs or sheep. The advantages are: 
easy access to the fruit, the consumption at 
once of all fallen fruit and larvae of the 
codlin moth which would escape and attack 
the winter fruit if planted near by. By the 
plan we advise, the early fruit attracts the 
moths which can be destroyed, and the later 
fruit will be safer from attack. 
Roots of trees that have small bunches of 
knots on them are infested with root-lice. 
If they are to be planted dip them for a few 
minutes in water at 130 degrees before set- 
ting. Water, if much hotter than 130 de- 
grees, will scald the roots and kill both trees 
and lice. If the tree is already planted, spread 
a liberal quantity of ashes around it, but 
not heaped close around the trunk, which 
would destroy both bark and tree. Strong 
hot soapsuds are useful for destroying root- 
lice when poured around the tree. Unless 
too liberally applied it may be used on a 
tree, two inches or more in diameter, boil- 
ing hot without injury. 
Look carefully for eggs of insects on fruit 
trees and remove them. Some of them, like 
the Basket Worm, are very conspicuous and 
can readily be removed before the leaves 
appear. Bandages for Canker Worms should 
be at once applied if their use is intended. 
The better plan is to spray th e trees with Lon- 
don Purple or Paris Green. It is much more 
effectual. 
Trees when received in a dry condition 
should be covered with moist soil, and if the 
weather is wet the buried trees should be 
protected with hay or straw to shed the rain, 
since too much moisture is injurious. When 
the trees have become swollen to their for- 
mer size, plant them at once, keeping their 
roots from the air as much as possible. A 
tree well planted is half grown. 
An excellent wash to make the bark of 
fruit trees smooth, and valuable also for 
destroying the eggs of borers and other in- 
sects, is made by taking a one pound can of 
concentrated lye (caustic soda) and dissolv- 
ing it in one gallon of water. Use with a 
mop or brush, taking care that it does not 
get into the eyes of the operator as it is very 
corrosive. It causes a glossy bark and 
when applied in proper season will destroy 
young borers and also multitudes of root- 
lice. 
Extensive trials have taught the writer 
that on dry soils, deep planting of apples 
and peaches is most successful. Seven years 
ago some large trees were planted a foot 
deeper than they grew in the nursery. The 
year after planting was dry; not a tree suf- 
fered from drouth, nor was loosened by 
storms. They have remained very erect 
and grow very rapidly. In wet places deep 
planting is disastrous. In such situations 
if planted at all, it should be on ridges and 
planted shallow at that. Peaches are best 
when put moderately deep, with the soil 
ridged up to them by shallow ploughing 
afterwards. The trees need sufficient soil 
on the roots to keep them firm during high 
winds. The quince roots in a shallow soil 
and deep planting or deep culture is not to 
to be desired. A moist soil for them, how- 
ever, is very essential. 
As to the matter of pruning young trees, 
we observe that for quick growth and 
stocky trees, the side branches should not 
all be removed. A tree with them on looks 
unsightly but nature seems to approve of 
the arrangement and a stocky tree follows. 
Those varieties like the Limber Twig, the 
writer can only good make trees of by al- 
lowing an abundance of side branches. 
These are cut away as soon as the tree 
grows stocky enough to support itself. With- 
out this plan the growing of some weak 
growing kinds is impossible. 
In working among trees use a very short 
evener as well as swingletree. These can be 
made very short and should, with the trace, 
be wrapped with an old sack, to prevent 
barking the trees. Short evener s and swin- 
gletrees are much easier to use, and soon 
pay for their cost. — Eli Minch. 
Prof. K. F. Smith’s Views on the Peach 
Vellows Combated. 
It was not my good fortune to listen to 
Prof. E. F. Smith, at the last meeting of the 
N. J. Hort. Soc., but from the published re- 
port I learn many things to surprise me. I 
regret very much that Mr. Smith has spent 
only two years in the study of the Peach 
Yellows, and has not had time, as yet, to 
reach the bottom facts of peach diseases. I 
regret, still further, that he uses nearly all 
the paper he presented to refute the sup- 
posed value of special manures for the peach 
and to weaken all evidence that has been 
advanced to show the value of special man- 
ures. It presents no new facts but numer- 
ous errors and, when carefully sifted, con- 
sists in the simple statement that he deems 
the Peach Yellows to be a contagious dis- 
ease, of which he claims to know nothing, 
either of its origin, cause, or mode of repro- 
duction, or remedy. 
I regret that the work of two years should 
be so barren of fruit, and that in place of 
making new investigations or taking a new 
field, he is content to attack the truth of the 
statements of former investigators. He as- 
serts on page 42, New Jersey Horticultural 
Society Report 1888, that “ The earth 
is an inexhaustible store-house of potash, 
lime, magnesia and other similar necessary 
plant elements. In fertile soils, especially 
in loams and clays, resulting in the decompo- 
sition of feldspars, there is an enormous 
quantity of potash.” I think Prof. Smith 
has succeeded in getting a larger 
number of errors in the above than I ever 
supposed it to be possible in the same num- 
ber of wprds, no matter how put together. 
There is no soil, no matter however rich, 
that contains inexhaustible stores of fertil- 
ity. Careful estimates show that a rich soil 
of proper proportions of each element that 
plants require, would be exhausted of all 
stores of the plant elements, if full rotations 
of crops could be grown upon them, in less 
than three hundred years. But all soils are 
not alike rich. Some may have an abund- 
ance of potash and no phosphoric acid, 
without which no plant can flourish. The 
stores available of any one of the neces- 
sary elements may be speedily exhausted 
and leave the soil barren for the want of a 
single one. The statement that loams and 
clays derived from feldspars contain an 
enormous quantity of potash is very errone- 
ous. Some contain none whatever, others 
less than one-third per cent, some are richer 
in potash than the best wood ashes, and in 
all cases it is more or less unavailable for 
plant food wherever found in the soil. 
The further statement he makes, “There 
is in reality no such thing as permanently 
exhausting an originally fertile soil. No 
matter how heavily it has been cropped, we 
have only to treat it kindly, and wait for 
nature to convert the insoluble into soluble 
compounds and it will again be fertile.” 
The readers of the Orchard & Garden will 
never see me sitting on the top of a fence 
rail, treating a large field kindly and pa- 
tiently waiting for the field to become fer- 
tile. Dismissing this and many other im- 
possible statements, I would say we must 
apply manures to restore lost fertility. We 
must study the composition of each soil 
separately, and the wants of each species of 
plant and their feeding capacity. Some 
plants and trees require certain plant foods 
in abundance ; some need loose soils, others 
wet ones ; some prefer high altitudes, others 
flourish only on low lands. Some varieties 
of fruit, like the peach, require an abund- 
ance of free potash and easily available phos- 
phoric acid. When carefully studied we 
find different varieties of the peach are dif- 
ferently affected by soils and in a less strik- 
ing manner may be, like apples, separated 
into potash, limestone, and phosphatatic 
groups. ^ 
If the reader will bear with me I will try 
to find the bottom facts, which will, in 
future numbers, make the problem of peach 
growing much easier and the results more 
satisfactory. — Eli Minch. 
