Des Arc weekly citizen., 1868-07-21
The Peach.


 scientific horticulturists, the majority of us know very little about the peach.
 Stop! may be too fast in this proposi- tion; well, let it be modified by saying that very little definite information is to be met with in our periodicals respecting the peach.
 Since A. J Downing wrote up the his- tory and practice of peach-growing as an orchard crop, few satisfactory experiments have come within our observation calcu- lated to throw satisfactory light on the want of success which has, in the majority of cases, attended the extensive culture of this fruit.
 Too much like many other ventures, "peachraising has had its day."
 This idea might be accepted without comment but for the fact that under cer- tain circumstances, and in various sections of the country, at intervals, fair crops of a fair quality are produced. But what is more important, individual trees, in many sections, are found to produce abundant crops of the largest and finest fruit, with out, it would seem, any special care or at tention. Such trees are produced from chance pits, either deposited as an expcri- ment in private yards or gardens, or spring up spontaneously from the pits cast away by chance. In either case the result is of equal importance in demonstrating that good peaches and an abundant crop may be obtained from such individual trees, leading us to the inquity, why this result in these exceptional cases
 That there are hundreds of such instances of chance seedlings producing luscious fruit, and an abundance of it, it is presumed no one will question who has been close observer or frequent atten- dant at fruit exhibitions.
 Nothing connected with our fruit cul- ture is more striking than the rapid de- cline of the peach crop in many sections of the Middle States. It can scarcely be credited that, in twenty years, districts of New Jersey have fallen off from thousands of bushels of choice fruit to few bushels of like quality the remainder being spot ted, second rate, or almost worthless fruit Yet who can doubt but that negligent cultivation and want of due attention to the requirements of this unacclimated tree have been the chief causes of the dete- rioration?
 Changes in the atmospheric conditions of our climate have, without doubt, had much to do with the recent failure of the peach, as all our orchard fruits appear to be on the decline during the past quarter of century. Atmospheric changes can not, however, account for the entire fail. ure; several other matters bear a part of the blame. Various reports of reliable and interested growers combine to place considerable weight on the nature of the soil, and many of them express their be- lief in the absence in many soils, other- wise apparently suitable, of some ''unknown ingredient" which the peach demands !; this is but negative information. Other more certain defects are readily detected, such, for example, as the general exhaus- tion of the thin sandy soil chiefly selec- ted for peach orchards the exhaustion of the vigorous constitution of the trees by injudicious selection of diseased or debili- tated pits; budding by selecting cions from one-yearold immature trees, in which the wood producing cells only have been developed, inattention to the selection of aproper site, in which the tree will be cx. posed during the early spring and late fall, so as to avoid the premature starting of the sap before the severe frosts have disappeared, thereby exposing the expan- ding buds, and in autumn or early winter shelter preventing the full development and maturation of the wood by the partial ripening of the foliagc-these are some of the causes which, in my mind, bave led to the failure of the peach.-[Rural World.