22 
HARRISONS’ NURSERIES 
Peaches from our orchards are packed in Georgia carriers 
Peaches —A Year-after-Year Crop 
Wonderful successes are to be made by studying the needs and nature of this 
fruit. Under good care, a Peach orchard will live twenty-five years or longer, 
but the safest plan is to calculate on getting back the cost of the orchard and 
your profit, from three crops, giving the orchard ten years from the time it is 
planted in which to do this. 
Locate a Peach orchard on a north slope if you can, but if you can not, do 
not hesitate to plant in a different exposure. As with apples, the higher eleva¬ 
tions produce the finer fruit. The soil makes little difference so long as it is well 
drained. Peaches will not grow nor bear well when they have wet feet. 
Peaches must be cultivated. That is, the soil must receive treatment 
which will give the trees enough moisture, enough available plant food, and 
sufficient fine earth in which the roots may feed. All that has been said about 
planting trees in general, and about planting apple trees in particular, applies 
to Peach-tree planting. 
In pruning Peach trees, remernber that they bear fruit only on wood a 
year old, that is, only new wood this year will produce fruit next year. One- 
half to two-thirds of each season’s growth should be pruned off. Peaches will 
not produce profit unless both pruning and thinning are regularly done well. 
Peach-borers are soft, yellowish worms with a reddish brown head. They 
do not usually go so deep into the wood as do apple-borers, but live just under 
the bark. Go over all your trees, but particularly those younger than eight 
years, every April and October. You can locate the borers by their sawdust, 
by a blackened spot in the bark, or by the gum coming from their holes. Cut 
around the hole a little with a sharp knife, and if you do not find the worms 
right away, run a wire up or down the hole and mash them. 
The various remedies for scale, insects, and fungous diseases are covered in 
the spraying table on page 12. 
Packing the Fruit. Many different styles of baskets and containers are 
used for Peaches. Sometimes the local market determines the most practical 
containers, but as a general thing the grower will find it best to use one of the 
three standard methods. Our experience, which covers many years, has con¬ 
vinced us that the regular six-basket Georgia carrier is the most practical way 
of packing and shipping Peaches. The fruit should be packed in the baskets as 
shown in the illustration above. In this form the package ships well, the fruit 
arrives in good order, and is so attractive that it sells for good prices even in a 
slow market. The carrier can be packed in the standard refrigerator car with¬ 
out loss of space. In western Maryland and in West Virginia the bushel basket 
IS used by some growers. We have no particular objections to this package, 
excepting that it cannot be divided into small units as in the Georgia car¬ 
rier. A fruit-grower who has a local or nearby market can probably use the 
bushel basket, but it seems to us that the half-bushel “Delaware” basket is 
better for his purpose. Particularly is this true when the fruit is unusually large 
or too small for the Georgia carrier. 
