THE 



GARDENER. 



OCTOBER 1870. 



ON PRUNING SMALL-BUSH APPLE AND PEAR TREES. 



CORRESPONDENT has by means of some queries placed 

 this matter before us, and we have thought it of sufficient 

 importance to lift it out of the ordinary space allotted to 

 answers to correspondents, and give it a more prominent 

 position. "A. E." asks for some brief instructions as to the shoot- 

 pruning of small-bush Apple and Pear trees. He finds, as many 

 others have found to their dismay, that gardeners differ very much 

 about it \ and while some advocate the constant nipping back of the 

 shoots to two or three eyes all the summer, others state this plan, if 

 closely followed, will not throw them into fruit-buds, but will cause 

 them to make root, and then large gross shoots will be the result. The 

 advocates of the last method find twice a-year to be enough, and re- 

 commend that it be done at the end of June and late in the autumn. 

 Who wonders that amid this chaos of opinions "A. E." asks for 

 some enlightenment 1 ? 



Curiously enough, "A. E.'s" query comes just at a time when the 

 question has been presented to ourselves in a practical form. We 

 have in our garden, the soil of which is a dark stiff clayey loam, 

 resting on a bed of London clay within 2 feet of the surface, certain 

 pyramid and bush Apple and Pear trees, the former on the Paradise, 

 the latter on the Quince stock. Planted in the autumn of 1865, all 

 the trees have done well, and — the Pear-trees especially — made strong 

 growth. The system of pruning pursued had been up to the present 

 year that mentioned by " A. E. " as the " nipping off the shoots to 

 two or three eyes at short intervals during the summer." The trees 

 bore slightly in 1867, and since then but only very sparely indeed. 



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