On motion, the price of additional reports to members was fixed at $1.

On motion of Mr. Smith all competitors for premiums at the fruit show in Louisville shall be members of the Society.

Hon. A. W. Campbell of West Virginia, was made Vice President for that State.

On motion of Prof. Tracy, the President, Vice Presidents, Secretary and Treasurer were authorized to fix the time and place of the next meeting of the Society, after which the committee adjourned sine die.

15

ADDITIONAL PAPERS.

The following papers were prepared for the meeting, but in the absence of the writers and for want of time, were only read by title and filed for publication. They will doubtless be read with interest by all who are so fortunate as to secure copies of this volume. SECRETARY.

MANAGEMENT OF PEACH ORCHARDS.

BY GEORGE W. ENDICOTT, OF ILLINOIS.

I submit the following as some of the most practical points to be considered in the successful management of peach orchards in this part of the great Mississippi Valley. And I want to say right here that no part of this paper has been written from theory, unless the theory had been tested and found practical; neither was it written to cover every locality in this valley.

In writing.of orchards, the soil should be considered first, and the soil for different varieties of peaches should vary as much as the peaches. The red and white-colored fruit does better on soil not over-rich in humus or mould: while the yellow-fleshed fruit will do well in a very strong soil, if it has a good subsoil and perfect drainage. But all kinds of peaches require a good clay subsoil to be long-lived, and exempt from the attacks of the yellows. Any deficiency of the surface soil can be helped by the liberal use of ashes and barnyard manure, with an occasional dressing of phosphate of lime. The preparation of the soil should be deep and thorough before the trees are planted.

The location of a peach orchard is a very important point to be considered. Perhaps the surest location is south and east of large bodies of water, and the next choice would be the summit of the highest hills, with a free exposure to the north and west.

AGE AND SIZE OF TREES TO PLANT.

For a long-lived and thoroughly profitable orchard the young seedlings should be planted where they are to remain when they are three or four inches high, and pushed by good cultivation till time to bud them. After

they are budded they should not be cultivated deeply, as the overgrowth would tend to drown the buds.

But, as most orchardists claim that the above method scatters the work over so much ground, they prefer to plant trees one year from the bud, and, if the trees are well grown, and well dug, and well planted, success will be reasonably sure, provided the trees are mulched if a drought sets in immediately after they are planted.

DISTANCE TO PLANT.

In planting peach trees the distance apart to plant has been a stumbling block to many, and the theories set forth by some writers are so contradictory and unreasonable that experience alone can determine what is best. A little thought will convince any planter that different varieties will do better at different distances. For instance, the Amsden and Alexander are enormous fruiters when young, and are short lived, and should therefore be set closer than Mountain Rose or May Beauty, which are a little tardy when young and are long lived, strong growers, and good bearers for many years when they do begin to fruit.

A good rule would be to plant the early bearing sorts sixteen by twenty feet, and the large growing, long-lived varieties twenty by twenty-four feet. This distance lets the sun in on the ground to dry it out during the rainy spells we have during the summer, and prevents rot to a great extent. In fact, an orchard of peaches planted twelve by twelve feet on our strong soil here would be nothing but a hot-bed for rot and curculios. I have an example of that near me. Not one basket of good, sound peaches has been gathered from it in five years.

WHAT VARIETIES TO PLANT.

What varieties to plant is a question for each orchardist to decide for his own locality, and a list that would be satisfactory at this point would not serve at some other place. But with our railroad transportation the safest list would reach through the season from June to October.

The following list of well tried varieties will give a succession, and, by adding local varieties of known excellence, will be good through the whole valley: Alexander or Amsden. Early Rivers, Hoynes' Surprise, Yellow St. John, Mountain Rose, Large Early York, Old Mixon, New Thurber, Reeve's Favorite, Christiana, Steadley, Picquet's Late, Salway and Henrietta for a cling. This list would have to be curtailed at the North and some of the fine Southern varieties added at the South.

There are many other good peaches, but the list named covers the season with fruit and combines as many good points as any I could name to plant for profit.

After the varieties are settled on and the trees planted, the cultivation of a young orchard is an item to be well considered by the planter. Almost every

one will plant some crop in a young peach orchard, and if the proper crops are chosen there can be no harm in it, provided the soil is well fed for the extra crop.

But no crop should be planted that has to be cultivated after midsummer; therefore, corn is the best crop, and potatoes the worst, as digging the potatoes prolongs the growing season too late for the wood to ripen properly. This applies only to young trees till they begin to bear; after the trees begin to bear heavily they must be cultivated all summer, to keep up a good growth till fall, so the leaves will not fall prematurely; if this happens, the warm weather late in the fall will advance the buds so much that they will be likely to get killed with the cold of winter, especially all the Crawford type of peaches. I don't know of a better way to treat an old orchard than to cultivate well till about September 1, and then sow two bushels of rye per acre, and turn it under when in bloom the next spring The growing rye will keep the soil from washing away in the winter and early spring, and a heavy crop turned under puts the ground in the best possible condition for a good, healthy growth of wood and fruit.

INSECT ENEMIES TO TREES.

The insect enemies of peach trees are the two species of borers. Without using any scientific names, I will call them root and trunk borers. The first named is the most to be dreaded, and the injury done by either can not be cured.

Therefore the peach grower must depend on prevention for permanent results. If the borers have got a start, they must be cut out, every one of them, and destroyed, and the wounds induced to heal as soon as possible; but the injury they can do in a short time will be more or less permanent; but it is much easier and cheaper to prevent than to cure.

The following treatment, if thoroughly done, will be successful: Take two gallons of strong (country) lye soap and add one pint of crude carbolic acid; set the mixture in the sun for four or five days, or till the soap and acid are thoroughly mixed; then add six gallons of warm rainwater, and keep the mixture thoroughly stirred, and apply to every part of the trunk, crotches of limbs, and crown or upper roots (first remove the earth from base of tree) with a brush or mop of old cloth; then apply one-half peck of leached ashes to the crown of tree. This treatment annually has been a sure remedy with me, and answers for all the borer family. It should be applied about May, in this latitude.

PRUNING.

The pruning of peach orchards has run so much to theory in the minds of horticultural writers in the last few years that common sense has had to give way, and will only come to the front again when the folly of these paper orchardists perishes with the lives of the trees they have mutilated.

The head of a peach tree should be started about four and one-half feet

from the ground, and a leader trained up straight three or four feet with side branches radiating from this main stem; and none of these main radiating branches should ever be allowed to exceed five feet in length. This will necessitate summer pruning, without which no peach tree is well trained. When the trees are young the suckers or sprouts may be allowed to grow on the trunks to some extent, and kept shortened in, so the trunk will be protected from the hot sun and the attacks of the trunk-borers. These side shoots should all be removed as soon as the top of the tree will shade the trunk.

A number of limbs should be allowed to grow a little lower than the head is wanted till the tree comes into bearing; then they should be sawed off, with stumps about five inches long (the use of these stumps will be explained in another chapter), and the whole top of the tree must be thinned out and shortened in so the sun and air can reach every peach on the tree some time in the day.

THINNING THE FRUIT.

Thinning the fruit of a peach tree has never received the attention of our growers as it should. There are many varieties of peaches that are such heavy fruiters that you seldom see a specimen of first-class fruit on a tree that has 4,000 peaches on it (and that is about an average crop on a fullgrown tree), and the whole crop will not bring money enough to pay for packages and freight; while, if 3,500 of the number had been thinned off, the 500 would have filled ten boxes or baskets that would net $1.00 each. This is no theory; it is the actual result from alternate trees in the same row. Thinning is not only a success financially as to the fruit, but the health of the tree is greatly promoted. In fact, I believe that over-fruiting shortens the lives of our peach trees more than one-half. To properly thin fruit on a full-grown tree, there should always be a space of four to six inches between each two specimens. Dr. Hull, of Alton, said, eight inches, but I think that distance ought to be modified to conform to the different conditions of tree and soil. But there is one very important point to be considered right here. If peaches are to be thinned they must be bugged, and if they are bugged they must be thinned; and, with a few isolated exceptions, there can be no first-class peaches marketed in this valley without both. Any man who can not accept these two last conditions had better not go into peaches for profit.

CURCULIOS.

Catching the curculios, or "bugging" peach trees, is a subject that will be indorsed by some growers and sneered at by others, and both parties will contend they are solid in their positions. But the one solid argument on the side of bugging is that the fruit always sells at the outside price, and there is always a demand for it, when the wormy stock is a drug on the market, and it don't require a philosopher to tell a peach shipper what that means.

The cost of bugging I have found to be about seven cents per bushel, by careful account kept for six years. I have found the most convenient catcher