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NEW YORK, APRIL 17, 1909 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
THE PEACH AND HOW TO PROPAGATE. 
From Pit to Tree, 
The peach, which is supposed to be a native of 
Persia and China, was brought from 
Persia into Italy by the Romans, and 
soon found its way into Britain and 
France, and is supposed to have been 
brought to this country about 1680 
by the settlers. Downing, in his book 
‘‘Fruits and Fruit Trees of America,” 
says: “It is a curious fact in the his¬ 
tory of the peach, that with its delicious 
flavor were once coupled in the East 
certain notions of its poisonous quali¬ 
ties. This idea seems to have accom¬ 
panied it into Europe, for Pliny men¬ 
tions that it was supposed that the 
King of .Persia had sent them into, 
Egypt to poison the inhabitants with 
whom he was then at war. It is also 
worth remarking that the peach tree 
seems to hold very much the same 
place in ancient Chinese writings that 
the tree of knowledge of the Scriptures, 
and the golden Hesperides apples of 
the heathens do in the early history 
of the Western nations. The traditions 
of a peach tree, the fruit of which 
when eaten conferred immortality, and 
which bore only once in a thousand 
years, are said to be distinctly pre¬ 
served in early Chinese writings. 
Whatever may have been the nature of 
these extraordinary trees it is certain 
that not a slip or sucker has been left 
behind. We must therefore content 
ourselves with the delight, which a 
fine peach of modern times affords 
to the palate and the eye.” And some 
one else has said that a basket of ripe 
peaches in the market was worth more 
than a pound of calomel in the shop, 
and that it robbed the doctor of a pa¬ 
tient and the druggist of a prescrip¬ 
tion. 
In its adaptability to the soil and 
climate of this country the peach has 
as wide a range as any other fruit, and 
the fruit is considered the greatest 
luxury of its season. New Jersey had 
the distinction for years of being one 
of the greatest peach-growing States 
in the country, and old men have told 
me of the immense crops that they have 
seen grown on the then virgin soil, 
and which often had to be made into 
peach brandy, as the markets were 
glutted with the fruit and transporta¬ 
tion facilities were few and far to 
reach. 1 he lack of knowledge as to 
the replenishing of food material to 
the soil that the peach had exhausted, 
soon caused the peach to be replaced 
by other products of the farm, and the 
high prices for grains during and for 
some years following the Civil War 
caused the growing of the peach to 
about cease in the State. The disease 
known as the “yellows” was another 
cause for the discontinuing of peach 
growing, and this disease is still the 
great drawback to the successful cultivation of the 
peach. No remedy has been found for it except to 
destroy every root and branch by burning every 
tree attacked by the disease. The National and 
State Agricultural Departments have put their best 
scientific men to work to solve the mysteries of 
the cause and to find the cure of this disease with¬ 
out finding any remedy—except I hat named—the 
fern 
■ 
.* 
* 
PEACH PITS FOR PLANTING. Fig. 171. 
ROOT SYSTEM OF A FALL PLANTED PIT. (Reduced). Fig. 17a. 
total destruction of every tree affected. This dis¬ 
ease has never been so bad in New Jersey as in some 
other sections of the country, and a great deal of 
the so-called yellows in this State have been starva¬ 
tion. I have seen trees that were thought to have 
the yellows made as healthy, thrifty and produc¬ 
tive trees as one could desire by applying liberal 
quantities of lime, manure, phosphoric acid and pot¬ 
ash to the soil. One of the very neces¬ 
sary requisites to prepare the soil for 
the planting of peach seed in the nursery 
—or peach trees in the orchard—is a 
heavy application of lime, and this is one 
thing that is as a rule always left out. 
The propagation of the peach tree 
was for years almost a monopoly of 
the State of New Jersey—and orchard- 
ists from every part of the country 
thought they must have a peach tree 
grown in New Jersey to be sure that 
it would be healthy, free from yellows 
and true to label. The nurserymen of 
this State became experts in the pro¬ 
pagation of the peach, one firm alone 
budding nearly if not quite a million 
stocks in a season. The business was 
in the hands of a few large concerns, 
but multitudes' of farmers planted a 
few thousand seeds every year and de¬ 
pended upon the nurseryman buying 
from them when his stock became ex¬ 
hausted. The employees and others in 
the nursery centers became expert bud- 
ders, tiers and toppers, doing the work 
often by the thousand and making big 
wages at it. Delaware, Maryland, Vir¬ 
ginia, New York, California and all 
the Western States looked to New Jer¬ 
sey for a supply of peach trees. Nur¬ 
serymen in other States soon found it 
profitable to grow the trees, and many 
budders from New Jersey found profit¬ 
able employment among them, so that 
now the growing of peach trees, as 
with other nursery stock, is not con¬ 
fined to any section, and a tree grown 
in one section is just as good as that 
grown in another, if it was started 
from as good a seed grown in healthy, 
clean soil and conditions, and budded with 
a healthy bud, and labeled true to name. 
The New Jersey nurseryman wanted 
his seed direct from the natural trees 
of the mountains of Tennessee when 
he could possibly get them. First be¬ 
cause the trees were supposed to be 
healthy, second because the seeds were 
very small, and yet many pits con¬ 
tained two kernels—or what was 
termed twin seeds; they had strong 
germs and made more seedlings per 
bushel of pits than any other pits that 
could be had. But the Tennessee crop 
was limited and often a failure, so the 
next best was North Carolina seed. 
This was a large pit and seldom had 
more than one kernel to a pit, and the 
third choice was a natural seed from 
Accomac Co., Va. This last seed was 
so large that it was not a profitable pit 
to buy. The business of supplying 
seed to nurserymen soon fell into the 
hands of dealers, and they depended 
largely on the local seed ’collectors 
for their supply, and as the demand 
increased means had to be made to 
supply it, and often the “can house” was the very 
best means of a supply, and the meshes of a sieve 
made the different kinds of seed, that only the ex¬ 
pert could detect the fraud. Besides, thousands 
