The whole growing under glass was a major trend in the mid/late 1800's, both in the northeast US and in northern Europe. For peaches the extra heat afforded in the summer under glass helped ripening times, same for grapes and citrus. It was a rich persons hobby apparently, along with race horses etc. As far as (re)-learning old lessons from these books, that one cuts both ways. There is a ton of knowledge that got lost over the years so there is a lot we can (re)-learn from them, but on the other hand they had some significant misconceptions, for example they talk on and on about this supposed disease called "peach yellows" which is now believed to just be nutritional. Re: the late summer pruning I also believe the old authors have that one right. I should pull out a few of these old books and re-read them, I was reading many of them 4-5 years ago but have not done too much lately. Check out Wright's Fruit Grower's Guide, thats one of my favorites. Fruitnut, you would enjoy reading the long sections on growing fruit under glass. I also learned a lot from their pruning descriptions, it is surprising how advanced their pruning methods were 150 years ago. Scott

Safaribabe, There's nothing wrong with wanting some quick advice. I've been on forums before where I just wanted some quick answers without investing a lot of time. We all have busy lives and different hobbies. I'm not from CA, and have no desire to go there (even to see the Safari babes) but I'll do my best to offer a few recommendations. Obviously, I'll defer to recommendations from a fruit growers who have actually lived there. For sweet apples, I recommend Fuji and Mutsu. I like Pink Lady as a sweet/tart. The above ripen later in the year. They are all susc. to the major apple diseases, but I doubt you have too much problem with that in CA. For Apricots, a lot of CA growers rave about Royal Blenheim. It probably blooms pretty early though. For a later blooming cot, try Harglow. Tomcot is also praised as an apricot that gives a more reliable crop, due to a long bloom period. Peaches. Most any should do well for you. Some that have ranked high in Dave Wilson taste tests include: O'Henry, Indian Free, Harken, Loring. Harken ripens midseason, around Redhaven. Loring a couple weeks later. O'Henry and Indian Free are very late season peaches. Fruitnut is really the one who needs to give you specific advice. He's lived out there and does a lot of container growing. He should be able to help you with varieties as well as good rootstocks for containers. If you want some good west coast mail order nurseries, I've ordered from Bay Laurel Nursery (CA), VanWell Nursery (WA), Burnt Ridge Nursery (WA), and Raintree Nursery (WA). I've also ordered from C & O Nursery (WA) but was a little disappointed that they tacked on a "packing charge" on the order. I've received good stock from all the above, and they all have Websites.

Kevin, Good questions. I wouldn't be overly concerned about rootstock. While rootstocks can convey characteristics like tree size reduction, increased precocity, cold tolerance, water tolerance, etc., unless you have a specific need, standard roots will do fine. Konrad offered some good information as usual, although I might question that poor vigor is a problem with fruit trees on their own roots. A big part of the reason nurseries suggest planting the graft union above the soil line on dwarf trees is so the scion portion doesn't root out and cause the tree to lose it's dwarfing characteristics. Here's a little background. Rootstocks dwarf by nature of some degree of incompatibility with the scion. This incompatibility disrupts the flow of carbohydrates and other nutrients producing a smaller sized tree. There is good research indicating the larger the portion of dwarf rootstock sticking up out of the ground, the greater the degree of incompatibility. Limiting the nutrient flow can cause positive things like increasing cold tolerance (i.e. forcing the tree into dormancy earlier) but many times it produces a more delicate tree requiring a higher level of management. Perhaps a biological analogy would be raising two children, one with optimum nutrition, the other on half rations. In most cases, the less fortunate child would be weaker, smaller, more prone to illness, and shorter lived. Sometimes the degree of incompatibility is too great, causing either long term graft failure or simply breakage at the graft union. Occasionally a rootstock will increase the flow of nutrients compared to a standard rootstock and produce a larger more vigorous tree. This happens only seldom. Generally it's the other way around. Naturally one might expect the fruit to be smaller on dwarf trees as well, but this is not the case. The reason being that most of the energy going into the fruit comes from the leaves, not the roots. In fact, the leaves export a significant amount of energy into the roots. That's why partially girdling a branch (i.e. choking it with a wire) will generally produce bigger fruit on that branch. The leaves use all their energy for the fruit with little or nothing to the root. This is also the reason some dwarf roots will produce marginally larger fruit. More leaf energy goes to the fruit and less to the roots. In times past, people were much less concerned about rootstock. Grafted apples were on seedling rootstock from Red Delicious apples. The primary reason Red Delicious seed was used was because Red Delicious was the most apple, and therefore the most common seed. Processing plants could collect large volumes of seed as they processed the apples The seed was inexpensive to purchase and trees performed fairly consistently on the rootstock. Same thing with peaches. Lovell rootstock was popularized because Lovell used to be a popular canning peach. Canners could sell the seed inexpensively. As far as I know, Lovell isn't canned today, but the seed hasn't lost popularity. Halford is still commercially canned today and is also a popular roostock. I grow my own peach roostock and haven't noticed any difference in performance from my own seedling rootstock and other more popular rootstocks like Halford, Lovell, etc. What you have described above is indeed called air layering. The reason most trees are not propagated by air layering is because it's much more economical to graft and success rates are generally higher. Lastly as an interesting aside, in rare cases the rootstock can convey it's own traits to the fruit. Tomatoes can be grafted onto poisonous nightshade plants (to which they are closely related). If grafted, the tomatoes will contain some of the poisonous alkaloids found in the rootstock.

Peaches were great this year. The spring was long and cold and the end of summer was dry, for me. I have one tree with peach bore. I will probably remove that tree. All the peach trees set fruit so I was eating peaches a long time this summer. The nectarine tree set two fruit and the japanese beetles ate so much of them I threw them away. I need to start training the trees to the stakes I will be tying them to. It looks like a long fall for me here so I will have a lot of time to do all this. Just hope I can find some cheap cover hay this year. I will spray more for the beetles next year as I think we will be overwhelmed with them. I tried to take picture of the covering process but the trees were small and it was hard to see the procedure. Maybe this year (if I think of it) I'll try to take pictures again.