United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I had two small trees from which, one autumn, I sold ten dollars' worth of fruit. They yielded more profit than is often obtained from a hundred trees. Now, in the light of these facts, realize the advantages secured by cutting back the shoots or sprays so as to leave but three or four fruit-buds on each.

Thus some weeks slipped by, bringing milder and more settled weather; but, as if winter and spring had roused all their forces to repulse the irresistible oncoming of the summer, along towards the beginning of May there was a cold storm of wind and sleet, lasting three days, which blasted the too confiding and premature fruit-buds, and ruthlessly cut off the heads of all the peeping, early wild-flowers.

I would not have my reader to suppose that one may always distinguish leaf-buds and fruit-buds at a glance. I may be mistaken in some of the above determinations, but they are essentially correct for I have the twig before me. In some varieties of apples the differences between the two kinds of buds are less marked. The certain way is to dissect the bud: one may then see what it contains.

Air-slacked lime is also useful to the peach in small quantities; and so, no doubt, would be a little salt from time to time. Bone-meal is highly recommended. Like other fruit-trees, the peach does not thrive on low, wet ground, and the fruit-buds are much more apt to be winter-killed in such localities. A light, warm soil is regarded as the most favorable.

The tender vine-shoots might trail on the ground for him till their fruit-buds were blackened; he would not put himself to the trouble of tying them up to the stakes, although the food of the family should be imperilled by his neglect. Now comes the sharp question, "Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" The answer is all too easy.

If six fair fruits mature on a branch like this, the crop will be good; and probably the branch would not have vigor enough to set as many fruit-buds the following year or to bear as many fruits.

These sparrows are becoming about the most noticeable of my winter neighbors, and a troop of them every morning watch me put out the hens' feed, and soon claim their share. I rather encouraged them in their neighborliness, till one day I discovered the snow under a favorite plum-tree where they most frequently perched covered with the scales of the fruit-buds.

These should be removed at once, that the infection may not spread. In cutting out the interfering boughs, do not take off the sharp- pointed spurs which are forming along the branches, for on these are slowly maturing the fruit-buds.

If the fruit-buds have been uninjured by the winter, they will nearly all form peaches, far more than the slender spray can support or mature. The sap will tend to give the most support to all growth at the end of the spray or branch. The probable result will be that you will have a score, more or less, of peaches that are little beyond skin and stones.

I would not allow this bed to be matted with an indefinite number of little plants crowding each other into feeble life, but would leave only those runners which had taken root early, and destroy the rest. A plant which forms in June and the first weeks in July has time to mature good-sized fruit-buds before winter, especially if given space in which to develop.