blight or shothole fungus.  This disease comes on early in the winter, sets the the new bark to gumming and endangers the crop.  Then if you have San Jose scale, or if your trees showed much curl-leaf last spring, you ought to spray before the blossom buds show color with the lime-sulphur wash.  Supposing that you have good buds now and are willing to protect them as suggested, your trees may be expected to come through with a good crop if seasonal moisture conditions are right.

Peach Fillers in Apple Orchard.

I have heard some talk against planting peach fillers in an apple orchard.  What is your opinion on the subject?

There is no objection providing the peach is profitable in the locality; and that point you must look into.  The peach trees will not injure the apples unless they are allowed to stand too long.  In that case they would interfere with the development of the apple.

Grafting Peach on Almond.

May I expect to get good results by grafting some kind of peach to 19-year-old almond tree?  If so, what kind of peach will be best?  When shall I do grafting?

Peaches take to the almond all right.  Cut off and graft in the branches above the main forking of the tree; leaving at least one large branch to be grafted later or to be cut out entirely if you have peach growth enough to fill the top sufficiently.  Graft in any kind of peach you find to be worth growing.  Graft toward the latter part of the dormant season, say when the buds are swelling for a new start.

Peaches on Apricot.

I have a three-year-old peach orchard grafted or budded on apricot roots, and interspersed through the orchard are young apricot trees, from half-inch to inch and a half in diameter, which sprang from the root, the peach bud or graft having died.  I budded these over to peaches in summer, but the buds all died for some cause.  What is now the best course to transform them into peach trees?  If a graft, what form of graft, and approximately when should it be made?

You can graft peach scions into the apricot sprouts by taking the peach scions of the varieties you desire while the tree is perfectly dormant, keeping them in a cool place and putting in the grafts just as the buds are beginning to swell on the apricot stock.  The scions can be buried in the earth in the shade of a fence or building, selecting a place, however, which is moist enough and yet where the water does not gather.  The ordinary form of top grafting in stems an inch or more in diameter will work well.  The half-inch stems can be whip-grafted successfully.  You will have to wax well and see that the wax coating is kept sound until the growth starts.

Replanting After Root-knots.

In digging out some old peach trees, I find now and then a tree affected with root knot.  I am burning the root, of course, but as these trees are scattered in the orchard, I wish to plant young trees in same locations, thus preserving the rows.  Can new stock be safely put in the earth from which the old tree is removed?  If treatment of the soil is essential, what is recommended?