for January, 1921 



A29 



A Town With Walls Covered With Peach Trees 



S^' 



UPON the sunin- slopes of the httle town of Mon- 

 treuil, situated several kilometers from Paris, is 

 a network of high walls covered with peach trees 

 that bear fruits remarkable for their form, their pretty 

 bloom with vivid colors and their exquisite and fragrant 

 fiesh. For two hundred and fifty years, in fact, the gar- 

 deners of this locality, thanks to a good preparation of 

 the soil, to the choice of varieties successively improved 

 and to methods of sensible pruning, have succeeded in 

 obtaining peaches universally renowned. 



According to the Pratique du Jardinage, of the Abbot 

 Roger Schabol (1774), this unique horticultural industry 

 arose under Louis XIV. A musketeer, Rene Claude 

 Girardot, lieutenant of archers of the captaincy of Vin- 

 cennes, who withdrew from service in 1697, was the 

 promoter on his estate of Bagolet, as was a horticulturist 

 of Montreuil also, by the name of Pepin, pupil of La 

 Ouintinie, the celebrated director of the vegetable gar- 

 dens of the Grand King at ^^ersailles. Both diffused 

 the methods 

 already in use 

 toward the 

 end of the 

 XVII century 

 and owed 

 more to 

 chance than to 

 close observa- 

 tions. Accord- 

 ing to the tra- 

 dition the in- 

 habitants of 

 M o n t r e u il, 

 having at that 

 time eaten 

 peaches grown 

 at C o r h e i 1 , 

 upon trees in 

 the open, 

 threw the pits 

 into their gar- 

 dens. Some 

 sprang up 

 along a wall 

 and the whim 

 caught them 



of raising up the branches laden with fruit and of attach- 

 ing them to the wall. These good people, having neither 

 rushes nor osiers, made bands out of the pieces of their 

 old clothes and fi.xed nails in the masonry at the two ends 

 of the worn out cloths with which they wrapped each 

 branch. The peaches took color, acquired more taste 

 and increased in size more quickly than those grown 

 among the surrounding vineyards. Most of the trees 

 rarely froze. 



So the gardeners of this corner of the Parisian suburb 

 erected walls in all their grounds, and this custom has 

 become enormously generalized in France since then. 



Today, as our photographs bear witness, the same pro- 

 cedure is still followed at Montreuil. The peach de- 

 mands a good deal of space on an espalier, and, above all, 

 if it is grafted upon the almond is it necessary that it be 

 able to develop over from forty to fifty square meters of 

 wall surface. It adapts itself to nearly all soils on condi- 

 tion that they be deep enough, cool, but not loo moist. 

 They are propagated by grafting or liudding a dormant 

 eye upon a seedling, almond, plum, apricot or sloe-thorn, 

 according to the case. Thus in the south is found everv- 



General view of Montreuil near Paris. 

 hig,h walls, xvhich are 



where the peach grafted upon a seedling, whereas if late 

 varieties are desired use is made of the almond as a stock 

 and the tree is planted in good soil. When only moist 

 and shallow soil is at disposal the grafting is done by 

 preference upon the plum — (variety. Black Daucas or St. 

 Julienj. If the soil is both shallow and dry, recourse is 

 had to the apricot ; finally, if the peach tree is intended 

 for growing in a pot it is grafted upon the sloe-thorn. 

 Some cultivators at Montreuil employ, with success, as a 

 stock the vigorous cherry, St. Lucie, which finds itself at 

 home in all soils. 



After the grafting, practiced in the vicinity of Paris, 

 from the month of August until into September, the 

 peach tree is subjected to different forms: oblique (simple 

 or double), palmetto horizontal, palmetto vertical with 

 two, three or four branches. Then it is planted upon a 

 espalier. 



There is one general practice : the trees are oriented 

 toward the west or the south, for the action of the rising 



sun often 

 causes damage 

 to peach trees 

 exposed to the 

 east, and the 

 north ex- 

 posure is too 

 cold to ripen 

 these fruits 

 that originated 

 in Persia. In 

 dry and warm 

 soils the walls 

 are always 

 fronted west, 

 although the 

 trees grow 

 well with 

 southern expo- 

 sure ; but the 

 peaches fall 

 before they 

 mature. 



In France 

 the Winter 

 pruning of the 

 peach trees is 

 done during the months of February and March, for the 

 sap is then swelling the flower buds or future fruits, 

 when their plumpness and their dark color permit the pro- 

 ductive eyes to be distinguished from the pointed and 

 dark green shoots. Experts can then sacrifice this or that 

 branch quite advisedly. 



The gardeners of Montreuil see to it that, following 

 the annual pruning, the main branches producing fruit- 

 ing branches shall occupy fixed positions. When the 

 main branches are vertical tlie fruiting branches ought 

 to develop to the right or to the left and when the main 

 branches are horizontal they ought to develop upwards 

 and downwards, like the bones of a fish in relation to its 

 vertebral column. 



Once the fruiting branches have been treated accord- 

 ing to the preceding principles the peach trees are sub- 

 jected to the cultural operations of the Spring season 

 and of the .Summer, which complete the series of meas- 

 ures intended to insure the future fruiting. These are, 

 according to the case, the disbudding, the paling up. the 

 pinching off the small buds, the ])runing in the green" tTie 

 thinning of the fruits and the removing of leaves. 



The town 

 covered 



is surrounded 

 with Pcaeh trees 



with a network of 



