Clean cultivation, abundant fertilizing, thinning of fruit, warfare against insects and yellows, honest and tasteful marketing - these are the prime essentials to successful peach culture. These mean labor, expense, and vigilance. Comparatively few are willing to prosecute these requisites into details, and for this reason the industry is profitable to those who overcome.

The best peach lands are light or even sandy lands. Upon such lands the trees ripen their wood well and early, and they are uniformly productive. But light land does not mean poor land. The land must be enriched. Many manures are good. Stable manure is best when it can be had. It is applied liberally broadcast and is plowed or harrowed in. Ashes are good, but the quality of the purchased lots is variable and is often low. 30 or 40 bushels to the acre of unleached ashes is a common dressing. Chemicals are always good if they are used intelligently, but their application is usually hit and miss. It is always best to buy the chemicals or raw materials and make the mixture for the occasion. A combination of stable and concentrated manures is usually preferable to either alone. For fruits, potash is particularly valuable. Green manuring with rye has come to be a settled custom in most Michigan peach communities.

Sight and aspect are always important in peach growing. They must be determined by the local conditions. High lands are always best because of their atmospheric drainage and because the soil is likely to be more congenial to the peach. High sites are not valuable because they are windy sites, although there is a common notion to the contrary. The essence of their value lies in their drainage of cold air. Windbreaks are always desirable, but they must be adapted to the conditions. In the north, peaches are usually grown near large bodies of water for protection, and the winds off the lakes are warm winds. To stop these winds by dense plantings or by the adaptation of forests is usually injurious, but a thin shelter belt breaks the force of the wind and affords great protection to trees laden with ice or fruit, and lessens windfalls; and is not productive of injury.

The favorite aspect in the vicinities of the Great Lakes is one which faces the lake, but if the site is good the particular lay of of the land is rarely considered. But in interior places, aspect is more important. A southern exposure often means earlier flowering and increased liability to injury from late frosts. But the immense body of water in any of the large lakes warms up slowly in spring, and trees near them start later and escape frosts. I have many times noticed a difference of two weeks in time of blossoming of peach trees in places 20 miles apart, one of which lay along Lake Michigan and the other inland. Outside the influence of the lakes, spring frosts do more damage than cold winters.

Model Peach Tree Ten Years after Planting.

One year from the bud is the accepted age at which to set peach trees in the orchard. First-class trees are none too good. Spring planting is usually preferable to fall planting. When the tree is set, all the limbs are cut back to one bud, or the feebler ones are removed entirely. If the tree is tall and slender, the leader should be headed back, but good trees do not demand such treatment. Still the practice of heading back can hardly be objectionable. 20 by 20 feet are the usual distances apart for setting, although closer planting is sometimes practiced. But the wider planting gives better trees and better fruit, and renders labor easier.

There can be no royal advice for the pruning of a peach tree, or of any tree, in fact. The essential points to be secured are these: a low head and a thin one. Apple trees require high heads because they grow large and eventually the limbs droop more or less, and the trees are strong enough to endure rough treatment at picking time. But peach trees are not apple trees. Peach trees can be trained low and yet never intefere with cultivation; and they are not to be climbed into promiscuously, as apple trees are. Two feet from the ground is high enough to start a top. Most growers prefer even a lower top. From four to six good arms are trained to form the top. Subsequently pruning consists in thinning out half the small wood each year. This thinning improves the tree and thins the fruit as well. The pruning is done in late winter when labor is cheap, and leisure greatest. The shortening-in system is not practiced in Michigan, nor can I see any important reason for employing it when trees are properly grown. The three excellent illustrations are object-lessons in pruning. A model peach tree at 10 years of age is as thin-topped as fig. 3, even in June, when the leaves are out.

This illustration, as well as the others, is made from a photograph.

A Model Peach Orchard Six Years Planted.

•*1 will give you $100 if you find a weed in my peach orchard" - and I could not find one on ten acres ! This is by no means an unusual condition. No garden along the Seine was ever cleaner than many of these peach orchards which skirt the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. In May a crop of rye, which was sown the last of August or September, is plowed under, and from that time until rye is sown again the harrow and cultivator are constantly at work. Whether or no tillage is manure, tillage is success. But with the sowing of rye, tillage ceases, and the trees harden up their wood. Rye assists in keeping the ground clean, and affords a tolerable manure, and it is supposed to afford protection to the trees. When the peaches are as big as little marbles, thinning has begun. This thinning is done by hand - a slow process, but always a profitable one. Good peaches sell. How much to thin must depend upon the variety and the condition of the tree ; but it is a common rule that no two peaches when ripe shall touch each other.

The crop looks sparse and scant enough when thinning is completed, but the spaces are soon filled.

The insects must be conquered. Borers should be dug out in fall and spring, and they will soon cease to do much damage. Put little faith in external applications to kill or discourage the borer. Lazy methods are in the end expensive ones Cur-culios are caught on sheets, and some still use also the methods of catching them under chips. Catching the curculios means early rising and persistent effort through several weeks, but if the insects are abundant the effort pays. Begin as soon as the blossoms fall. Spraying with arsenites is not yet a practice; it is but a rude experiment in the hands of a few growers. But the practice will establish itself some day. We only need to learn a few more details and to practice nicety of application.

A Model Peach Orchard Ten Years Planted.

Yellows is not to be regarded as a curse to peach growing as a whole. It simply weeds out the shiftless and unprogressive growers. The men who have endeavored to argue it out of of their orchards have been distanced by those who have dug it out. And we shall all sooner or later accept the radical method of treatment or go out of the business; it is but a matter of time.

Honest and tasteful marketing never pays better than in peaches. The fruit will always rank among the luxuries in Northern markets, and luxuries must be attractive. Small gift packages are the best. Bushel baskets usually contain the poorer peaches, or at least the second grade. A customer does not purchase a bushel basket as a dainty present to his wife or sweetheart. Uniformity in grading the fruit must be imperative. It is always allowable to turn the red cheeks uppermost on the package, but there must also be red cheeks throughout the basket. The man who puts up the daintiest packages is the one who gets the best prices. But a dainty parcel demands fine fruits. The immature, woolly, green and hard peaches one too often sees in the markets may as well be sold in grain bags, or shoveled from a wagon into a dry-goods box.

Varieties are always local considerations, yet, none the less, among the most important. Varieties are often matters of fashion rather than of merit. Old sorts, which have fallen from the lists, often reappear; the old Barnard is now reappearing along the Michigan shore. The following sorts appear to be finding the most favor at present in that region Hale's Early, Lewis Seedling, Mountain Rose, Barnard, Snow's Orange, Yellow Alberge, Jacques' Rareripe, Switzerland, Hill's Chili, Golden Drop - a local variety - Smock.

Cornell University. L. H. Bailey.