The most salable butter, quality being equal, is that which is neatest done up. There is a great deal in the looks of a thing. You’ll always find it so.
RENOVATING PEACH-TREES.
The peach-tree inclines to thicken at the top, the small inside branches die, and are removed by every neat cultivator. As the branches shoot up, this tree is disposed to abandon its lower branches, and, like the vine, to bear on the wood the farthest from the root, i. e. the young and new wood. In a few years the tree has a long-necked trunk, sometimes several of them; while the weight of foliage and fruit is situated so as to act like a power applied to a lever; and as the fruit grows heavy, or a storm occurs, the tree is broken down. We have practised the following method with success. In the month of July we saw off the top of one half of the tree, leaving about ten or twelve feet of stem, measuring from the ground. New shoots will now put out along the whole trunk; a part of these should be rubbed off, according to the judgment of the cultivator, leaving such as will give symmetry to the tree, and form a head low down. The second year, these branches will bear fruit, and the other side may then be treated in the same way.
This new head will require little meddling with for about four years. At this time, or whenever the tree is outrunning itself, the same process is to be renewed. But this time the tree will be composed of a multitude of smaller branches, instead of two or three main ones as at first. Some of these should be wholly cut out, and the wound smeared with a residuum of paint, or a thick white paint, or grafting wax, or anything that will exclude the air while the cut is granulating. The others are to be cut within, say, five inches of the old, original wood—leaving, thus, a stem of mere stumps. If the branches are taken entirely off, leaving only the oldest wood, the buds which would break from it would not be as healthy or vigorous as those which will spring from the stumps of the later branches.
Probably twenty or thirty whips will come to each stump;
these should from day to day be reduced in number, until, at last, all are removed but one, and that one should, if possible, spring from the nearest point where the stump joins the old stem. When this new branch is obtained and fairly established, remove the stump with a fine saw, so as to leave the new branch, as nearly as possible, in the place of the old one. We remove the whips from a stump gradually in order to give the tree the advantage of their leaves as long as it can be done without interfering with the branch or branches which we are training out.
This method is to the peach what pruning is to the grape. The tree is kept in hand instead of sprawling abroad, a prey to its own weight and to storms; there is always a plenty of young wood for the fruit, which can be easily reached when one thins out, or gathers for use.