The Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent peach-pits, along with seeds of
other fruits, to be planted by the colonists.[130] Twelve years later
George Fenwick, Saybrook, Connecticut, writes to Governor Winthrop that
he is "prettie well storred with chirrie & peach trees."[131] Justice
Paul Dudley,[132] who seems to have been the leading horticulturist
in Massachusetts in his time, writes in 1726: "Our Peaches do rather
excel those of _England_, and then we have not the Trouble or Expence
of Walls for them; for our Peach Trees are all Standards, and I
have had in my own Garden seven or eight Hundred fine Peaches of the
Rare-ripes, growing at a Time on one Tree." From another statement made
by Justice Dudley,[133] we learn that peaches were still being grown
from the stone and may assume that budding was not known or so careful
a horticulturist as our author would have mentioned it. He says: "Our
Peach Trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three Years
from the Stone. I have one in my Garden of twelve Years Growth, that
measures two Foot and an Inch in Girt a Yard from the Ground, which,
two Years ago, bore me near a Bushel of fine Peaches."
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]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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