FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
89 
where the soil is of good sandy loam and 
rather dry, with a good proportion of 
humus, as the land was newly cleared for 
the purpose and trees were planted right 
away at a distance of 13 feet by 13 feet. 
An old five acre field was also planted in 
peaches—15 feet by 15 feet, and we con¬ 
sider this latter distance iDCst, giving more 
room for cultivation and fruit picking 
than the former and still having a large 
number of trees to the acre. This seems 
desirable as the profitable life of the peach 
tree does not often exceed seven years, if 
as long. We would advocate pushing the 
young trees along the first two years by 
thorough cultivation and careful, though 
liberal, fertilization. Varieties planted in 
our orchards were Jewel, Waldo, Angel, 
Pallas, Oviedo and Dwarf Japan Blood. 
Of these we have been most successful 
with the Jewel, Waldo and Oviedo and, 
in a lesser degree the Pallas. The Japan 
Blood and Angel varieties have draw- 
backs which will eliminate them from any 
further planting on our part. The only 
recommendations to the Japan Blood are 
its late blooming and early ripening, in 
other respects it is unsatisfactory, being 
shy bearer, of 10 per cent flavor and 
a bad shipper. As to the Angel, it is an 
early bloomer, courting disaster, without 
the compensating quality of early ripen¬ 
ing, of good flavor, but rather too acid to 
be a favorite on markets. 
With regard to cultivation of the bear¬ 
ing tree, our practice has been shallow 
plowing during late fall and clean 
cultivation during spring, and especial¬ 
ly during dry weather to conserve 
moisture, continued as long as pos¬ 
sible without knocking off the fruit. 
After that time orchards are allow¬ 
ed to go to crab-grass for hay and 
the trees rest, after picking, till fall. Of 
later years we have put off fertilizing, till 
safety of bloom has been assured, not be¬ 
cause we consider this the best treatment 
for the tree, but because in growing peach¬ 
es commercially one cannot afford to fer¬ 
tilize trees which will be unproductive that 
year, nor does it seem very necessary, as 
the trees are relieved, for that season, 
from the exhaustion consequent upon the 
production of a crop of fruit. The safety 
of the crop being reasonably certain, we 
have been accustomed to apply from five 
to ten pounds or more per tree of a well- 
balanced fertilizer. 
As to pruning, the young trees had a 
careful and somewhat heavy pruning of, 
say a quarter of a season’s growth, for 
two or three years. ^ After several 
bearing seasons, we found it advantage¬ 
ous to cut back the trees heavily, forcing 
them to make almost an entire new head. 
This temporarily reduces the crop of fruit, 
but the following season a much finer 
quality is produced and the profitable life 
of the tree thereby lengthened. 
The peach tre)e has about as many 
insect enemies and diseases as any fruit 
tree we know of and it unfortunately, 
seems to have a less vigorous constitution 
to resist disease than most of our com¬ 
mercial fruit, a peach-tree succumbing en¬ 
tirely, when the orange tree will exist for 
years in a more or less healthy condition. 
Some of these diseases can be easily man¬ 
aged, others are difficult. I will only men¬ 
tion three or four of the latter. San Jose 
Scale —In our case this was naturally ful¬ 
ly controlled by the orange colored 
Spharostilbe Cocophila, so we did not 
have to treat the trees. The crude oil 
treatment was very successfully used by 
Mr. Wm. Macklin of Dinsmore, nine 
miles north of Jacksonville. His orchards 
were on pine land. An extended report 
