SEEDLINGS GIVE WAY TO BUDDED TREES
About the close of the Eighteenth Century the planting of pits for permanent trees began to give way to budding. It does not appear who began budding peaches on this side of the Atlantic but the desirability of budded stock was discussed as early as 1736, for in that year we find the English botanist, Peter Collinson, urging his American colleague, John Bartram, to "graft Plums and Nectarines on Peach stocks."[134] The matter had evidently been under consideration before for Collinson tells Bartram "Pray try; I have great opinion of its succeeding."[135] Bartram is hard to convince and ten years later Collinson is still urging him to bud, for, in a letter of April 26, 1746, he writes, rather impatiently, "Though thou canst not see, yet I have told thee what inoculating a Peach stock may do."[136]
Probably the Princes, pioneer nurserymen in America, in their nursery at Flushing, Long Island, first began to bud the peach, for in their catalog of 1771 they offer 29 sorts though most of these appear to be types rather than varieties. Twenty years later they list 35 varieties with the statement that all "are inoculated." John Kenrick,[137] father of William Kenrick,[138] the pomological author, who for years was Prince's chief competitor, his nurseries being located at Newton, Massachusetts, began business in 1790 by planting a quantity of peach-stones the trees from which he did not bud. Four years later, we are told, he learned to bud and greatly extended his assortment of varieties, making a specialty of budded peach-trees.[139]
Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless commonly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor since, the world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so extended a scale as in America during the half-century following the Revolutionary war. The country between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi was being rapidly settled and on nearly every farm from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, barring a few in the northernmost parts of this great area, peaches were planted. They furnished food not only for the pioneers but were used in fattening pigs and in the earlier part of the period, at any rate, were, with apples, the chief supply of ardent spirits which every farmer then kept on hand for daily use. There were millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 but until that time there were but few named varieties. Then the art of budding began to spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of peaches was passed through the sieve of selection; local varieties quickly acquired fame; and, as means of communication developed, the new varieties began to be disseminated, until, in 1850, American nurseries were selling over 400 varieties, a number which at the close of the century had increased to over 1000.