Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/285

273 FRUITS.] HORTICULTURE 273 working is sometimes beneficial ; thus an almond budded on a plum stock may be rebudded with a tender peach, greatly to the advan tage of the latter. The peach border should be composed of turfy mellow loam, such as is suitable for the vine and the fig ; this should be used in as rough a state as possible, or not broken small and line. The bottom should slope towards the outer edge, where a drain should be cut, with an outlet, and on this sloping bottom should be laid a thickness of from 9 inches to 12 inches of rough materials, such as broken bricks or mortar rubbish, over which should be placed a layer of rough turf with the grassy side down wards, and then the good loamy soil to form the border, which need not be of greater depth than 18 inches, for the peach tree is most productive when the roots are kept near the surface. The borders should not be cropped heavily with culinary vegetables, as deep trenching is very injurious. Sickly and unfruitful trees may often be revived by bringing up their roots within 5 or 6 inches of the surface. The experience of the last few seasons has, however, been so disastrous that it has been questioned whether it may not be better, in cold soils and bleak situations, to abandon outdoor peach culture, and to cover the walls with a casing of glass, so that the trees may be under shelter during the uncongenial spring weather. The fruit of the peach is produced on the ripened shoots of the preceding year. It these be too luxuriant, they yield nothing but leaves ; and if too weak, they are incapable of developing flower buds. To furnish young shoots in sufficient abundance, and of requisite strength, is the great object of peach training and pruning. Trees of slender-growing, twiggy habit naturally fall most readily into the fan form of training, and accordingly this has generally been adopted in the culture of peaches and nectarines. The old fan form is very nearly that of tig. 82 (p. 245). The young tree is, in many cases, procured when it has been trained for two or three years in the nursery ; but it is generally better to commence with a maiden plant, that is, a plant of the first year after it has been budded. It is then in ordinary practice headed down to five or six buds, and in the following summer from two to four shoots, according to the vigour of the plant, are trained in, the laterals from which, if any, are thinned out and nailed to the wall. If there are four branches, the two central ones are shortened back at the subsequent winter pruning so as to produce others, the two lower ones being laid in nearly at full length. In the following season additional shoots are sent forth ; and the process is repeated till eight or ten principal limbs or mother branches are obtained, forming, as it were, the frame-work of the future tree. The branches may be depressed or elevated, so as to check or encourage them, as occasion may arise ; and it is highly advantageous to keep them thin, without their becoming in any part deficient of young shoots. Sometimes a more rapid mode of formation is now adopted, the main shoots being from the first laid in nearly at full length, instead of being shortened. The pruning for fruit consists in shortening back the laterals which had been nailed in at the disbudding, or summer pruning, their length depending on their individual vigour and the luxuriance of the tree. In well-developed shoots the buds are generally double, or rather triple, a wood bud growing between two fruit buds ; the shoot must be cut back to one of these, or else to a wood bud alone, so that a young shoot may be produced to draw up the sap beyond the fruit, which is generally desirable to secure its proper swelling. The point of this leading .shoot is subsequently pinched oif, that it may not draw away too much of the sap. If the fruit sets too abundantly, it must be thinned, first when as large as peas, reducing the clusters, and then when as large as nuts to distribute the crop equally ; the extent of the thinning must depend on the vigour of the tree, but one or two fruits ultimately left to each square foot of wall is a full average crop. The final thinning should take place after stoning. The best-placed healthy young shoot produced from the wood buds at the base of the bearing branch is to be carefully preserved and in due time nailed to the wall. In the following winter this will take the place of the branch which has just borne, and is to be cut out. If there be no young shoot below, and the bearing branch is short, the shoot at the point of the latter may sometimes be preserved as a fruit bearer, though if the bearing branch be long it is better to cut it back for young wood. It is the neglect of this which constitutes the principal fault in carrying out the English fan system, as it is usually practised. Seve ral times during sum mer the trees ought to FIG. 87. Moiitreuil Fan Training, be regularly examined, and the young shoots respectively topped or thinned out ; those that remain are to be nailed to the wall, or braced in with pieces of slender twigs, and the trees ought occasionally to be washed with the garden engine. The Montreuil form of training is represented by fig. 87. The prin cipal feature is the suppression of the direct channel of the sap, and the substitution of four or more commonly two mother branches, so laid to the wall that the central angle contains about 90. The other branches are all treated as subordinate members. This form is open to the objection that, if the under branch should die, the upper one cannot be brought down into its place. The form b la Dumoutier (fig. 88), so called from its inventor, is merely a refinement on the Montreuil method. The formation of FIG. 88. Dumoutier s Fan Training. the tree commences with the inferior limbs and proceeds towards the centre, the branches being lowered from time to time as the tree acquires strength. What is most worthy of notice in this method is the management of the subordinates in the pruning for fruit. When a shoot promises blossom, it is generally at some distance from the point of in sertion into the old wood, and the intermediate space is covered with wood buds. All the latter, there fore, which are between the old wood a and the blossom c in fig. 89, except the lowest b, are carefully removed by ebourgconncment. This never fails to produce a shoot d, FlG 8 9. -Pruning a la Dumoutier. the growth 01 which is favoured by destroying the useless spray e above the blossoms, and pinching off the points of those which are necessary to perfect the fruit. A re placing shoot is thus obtained, to which the whole is invariably shortened at the end of the year. Mr Seymour s form (fig. 90) approaches more nearly to the French method than any other practised in England, but the direct channel of the sap is not suppressed. It will be seen that the bearing shoots are all on the upper side of the mother branches, and that these bearing shoots are wholly reproduced once a year. The one side of the annexed figure represents the tree after the winter pruning, the other (left hand) side before it has undergone that operation. On the latter side the young shoots will be seen to be in pairs, and at the winter pruning the lower one, or that which has borne fruit, is cut out, and the other is brought down into its place, and shortened to about 8 or 9 inches, care being taken to cut at a wrod bud. At FIG. 90. Seymour s Fan Training. the summer disbudding those buds which are best placed and at the same time nearest the base are left to supply the future year s bearing wood. Some object that the annual excision of the bearing shoots produces a series of rugged and increasingly ugly protuber ances at their base and along the upper surface of the principal branches ; while others declare that this mode of training is the most perfect in theory that has been devised. We are inclined, how ever, to prefer the old fan form, which when well executed is nearest the natural habit of the tree, and best adapted to the uncertain i climate of England ; moreover, in all cases, ultra refinement for the sake of appearance is neither profitable nor judicious. For cold and late situations, the late Thomas Andrew Knight recommended the encouragement of spurs on the young wood, as such spurs, when close to the wall, generate the best organized and most vigorous blossoms, and generally insure a crop of fruit. They may be produced, by taking care, during the summer pruning or disbudding, to preserve a number of the little shoots emitted by the yearly wood, only pinching off the minute succulent points. On the spurs thus formed blossom buds will be developed early in the following season. This practice is well adapted to cold situations. XTT. - 7C