150 PRUNING AND MANAGEMENT OF THE PEACH TREE. 



and I advise no one else to do so. The season for planting is 

 commonly attended with sudden cold rains, which sometimes fill 

 the holes, rendering the earth so wet and cold as to prove inju- 

 rious to the roots ; but such is not the case when the holes are 

 made at the time of planting. 



IV. Planting the Tree. 



55. Everything being prepared we plant in the course of 

 November. The soil of the border having been newly worked, it 

 is sufficient in good light soils to make holes one foot square [better 

 two feet square] and two feet deep ; but when the soil is of a clayey 

 or damp nature, the holes must be two feet square and three feet 

 deep, and the earth before being filled in must be rendered light 

 by mixture with good garden mould. This method is to be pre- 

 ferred to that of planting in March, which has the great incon- 

 venience of causing a loss of valuable time to the tree, which, 

 when planted in November, is ready to vegetate the first fine 

 weather in spring ; but when planting is deferred till March the 

 vegetation of the tree is often retarded by the drying winds so 

 prevalent at that season. The plants called eighteen-months are 

 preferred for planting. They are so called from having been 

 eighteen months budded, or nearly so long. Trees which have 

 been thirty months budded, and which have been cut back upon 

 a lower eye, and of which the roots are much larger and less 

 fibrous than the former, are not so good ; still, in some particular 

 cases, they are not to be rejected ; for instance, they often take 

 root better in new ground. 



56. Whilst the holes are being dug, the roots are trimmed, that 

 is, their bruised extremities are cut with a sharp pruning-knife, 

 and so as that the cut surfaces may rest upon the earth when the 

 tree is planted. At the same time, its head is taken off at from 

 eight to nine inches above the bud to allow of planting it with a 

 sufficient inclination, so that the stem may touch the wall ; whilst 

 the roots are so far from the foot of the latter as not to be cramped 

 in growing by the foundations. See Fig. 0, which represents the 

 tree before being planted. It is headed back at the point a. 



57. The tree is fixed in its place at six and a quarter inches 

 from the wall, and not deeper in the earth than it was before. 

 It is so placed that the eyes a and b of the bud may be at each 

 side, and not before and behind, without heeding the position 

 of the original bud. It is of little moment whether the latter 



