i873-] PEACH CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 311 



found it necessary to cut away many 'of their roots after they were 

 first planted. I have never found much difficulty in subduing any 

 tendency that young trees have had to grow too grossly by pinching 

 the shoots when growing, and directing the energies of the tree to its 

 other parts. I think the practice of continually cutting hard back, and 

 preventing the trees from making a more natural headway, has much 

 to do with gross shoots. Letting the young trees bear heavily, in 

 conjunction with the training indicated above, is generally sufficient 

 when the trees are planted in a loamy soil into which rank manures 

 have not been introduced. However, cases do occur when the roots 

 have to be dealt with in the case of some of the stronger-growing 

 varieties. Then I would recommend a trench to be taken out at a 

 radius beyond where the roots have extended. Encroach carefully on 

 the roots, removing all the soil — but saving every possible rootlet — 

 close up to the bole of the tree, or as far up as the check that is 

 desirable would demand. Unless it be some roots very much out of 

 proportion to the others, they should not be cut back, but be all care- 

 fully laid in the border again with some sound fresh loam under and 

 over them, making the soil all firm about them again. This operation 

 I prefer doing just as the leaves are nearly all dropping off. If done 

 earlier, the wood is apt to shrivel instead of ripen. 



FORCING AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT. 



Time to commence forcing. — The time when ripe Peaches are 

 required, must of course regulate the time when forcing has to be 

 commenced. As the Peach and Nectarine will not submit to hard 

 forcing, especially in their earliest stages of progress, it takes about 

 five and a half months to ripen a crop when forcing is commenced late 

 in November. This may be termed very early forcing. On referring 

 to my note-books I find that trees started — by being shut up without 

 fire-heat for the first fourteen days — on the 15th November, ripened 

 their first dishes of fruit from the 24th to the 30th April. Those 

 started in January and February take fourteen days less time, but the 

 character of the season has much to do with the exact time required 

 to produce ripe fruit. Unless where there are several Peach-houses, 

 such early forcing is not desirable, and if the trees are not in good 

 condition it should never be attempted. From the beginning to the 

 end of January is a good time to start the earliest house, where there 

 are, say, three Peach-houses, allowing the interval of a month between 

 the starting of each house. These early houses, with a late one in 

 which no fire-heat is used beyond what is necessary to protect the 

 trees from frosts or to ripen the wood in autumn, keep up a long 

 succession of Peaches when the selection of varieties is made to this 

 end. In the case of young or newly-planted trees that have not been 



