146 PRUNING AND MANAGEMENT OP THE PEACH TREE. 



last are always budded with a single eye, the shoot from which is 

 pruned in the following spring. When budded in their position 

 against a wall, a bud can be placed on each side of the stock ; 

 this gives two eyes regularly placed for the formation of the two 

 main branches. A year is gained by this, for in the following 

 spring, instead of pruning the shoot from the bud to allow of the 

 growth of the two lower eyes, destined to form the two main 

 branches, these already exist, and can receive their first pruning. 

 But for that to take place, both buds must have taken well, and 

 both must be equally strong. Yet it is true that if one of them 

 die, we find ourselves, by straightening and pruning, in the same 

 position as if we had inserted one bud only, 



41. Nurserymen often commit the error of propagating, for too 

 long a time, a variety that they know to be good by taking shoots 

 for the supply of buds from the plants of that sort that were 

 worked the year before. It is better to renew these buds by 

 taking shoots from full-grown trees. This is the reason that I 

 bud myself the stocks which I have chosen in the nurseries ; by 

 this I am also more sure of the varieties ; I, however, take the 

 precaution of not nailing to the wall some shoots on the upper 

 part of the tree which is to be propagated from, so that the sap 

 may still be in flow at the time of budding. The necessity of 

 having shoots of good growth for this purpose is the reason of 

 nurserymen taking them from the open ground rather than from 

 the walls. 



42. By means of budding, several varieties of Peaches can be 

 grown on the same tree. This gives no great advantage, except 

 in a case where it is desirable to have, in a short time, a greater 

 variety of fruits than we should otherwise possess. Some buds 

 are worked on the strongest shoots of the middle of the tree. 

 Often these buds make shoots of five feet and more ; the eyes burst 

 and form fruit-branches ; and sometimes the following year ten 

 or twelve Peaches are gathered from the first shoot of the bud. 



43. By the same means it is possible to change the nature of 

 the fruit of a Peach-tree. A person had planted double-flowering 

 Peaches ; when he saw them his first impulse was to order them 

 to be destroyed. I persuaded him to do nothing of the sort, 

 hoping to make his trees productive in a short time. In the 

 beginning of August, I put ten or twelve buds on each tree, on 

 the young wood as well as on the main branches. The success 

 was complete, and in two years afterwards he gathered splendid 

 fruit. 



