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JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [ November 24, isos. 



house as a mode of Peach-culture. I repeat that it is a 

 structure eminently adapted to give much pleasure to those 

 who love gardening, and who enter into the spirit of fruit- 

 culture ; for the trees, growing to a certain extent in their 

 natural state without the formality of ti'aining, remind one 

 of more favoured climates. I have, however, a strong opinion 

 that with many persons the Peach tree trained against a 

 wall is its natural state, so much is it associated with our 

 gardening ideas. We walk in an orchard of Peach trees, 

 we enjoy the blossoming season, we see every fruit, and if 

 we have time and skill we assist our gardener by taking a 

 few trees under our especial charge, pruning and pinching 

 them in friendly competition with him. This is the sort 

 of intercourse that should take place between the gardener 

 and his employer, leading to a very happy state of things, 

 and widely different from the old-fashioned reserve which 

 with too many used to make a gardener fear to make his 

 employer too wise. 



As I have stated in the commencement of this article, 

 orchard-houses are not required in first-class gardens that 

 are favoured with a good soil and climate, and which are 

 cultivated merely for their produce — such as the Royal 

 Gardens, Frogmore, for instance; but in first-class gardens 

 not so highly favoured by climate, and where Apricots, 

 Pears, Plums, and Cherries trained to walls too often faQ 

 from the effects of spring frosts, they may be made most 

 useful adjuncts to the kitchen garden. Mr. Thomson, of 

 the Dalkeith Gardens, cultivates Pears in pots with great 

 success. He has now upwards of a hundr&d trees in pots, 

 and finds their fruit always excellent. So that in gardens 

 in cool climates, where there are Peach and Nectarine 

 houses heated in the usual manner, but where the above 

 varieties of fruits not requiring artificial heat are wanted, 

 strongly built but cheap houses might be erected in the 

 kitchen garden for their culture. The finer kinds of Cherries 

 amply repay the cultivator of them in such houses, as do 

 Plums, and above all Apricots, for of all wall trees Apricots 

 (the finer varieties), are the most tiresome to the gardener. 

 It is very rare to find a wall planted with Apricot trees in 

 a well-furnished state ; for after a few years liirge branches 

 die, and those left are too rigid to be bent so as to fill the 

 vacancies : consequently the good gardener feels constant 

 annoyance at seeing what he cannot remedy. 



All this may be avoided by having a span-roofed Apricot- 

 hous • : it shovdd not be small, but 20 or 2i feet wide and 

 12 feet high. But few gardeners as yet know what can be 

 done in the culture of Apricots in pots in well-ventilated 

 houses. Pot-culture is by far the preferable mode. When 

 planted in the borders under glass they will grow ram- 

 pantly and make long shoots without blossom-buds ; whereas 

 in pots they make short-jointed shoots, which are generally 

 fuU of blossom-buds. The soil they requu-e is a tenacious 

 loam made vei-y firm by ramming it down when partially 

 dry, at the time the trees are top-dressed in autumn. 



It is but recently that I have been fully impressed with 

 the agreeabUity and perfect success of pot-culture for 

 Apricots. Some of my trees in 18-inch pots are ten or more 

 years old; and those on stems from 2 to 3 feet in height 

 are models of perfection in culture. Their heads, from their 

 shoots having been pinched-in during the summer, are round 

 and sturdy as a pollard Oak, every shoot of last summer's 

 growth being a mass of blossom-buds. If Apricots are cul- 

 tivated in houses of the height I have mentioned entirely 

 appropriated to their culture, I should recommend them all to 

 be grown as low half-standards, with two to three-feet stems ; 

 they will then in the course of a f«w years form round heads 

 full of health and fertility. So averse are they to having 

 then- roots disturbed, that I have known all the blossoms 

 from a large number of trees drop off without setting their 

 fiTiit, only because they were top-dressed after Christmas. 

 For this reason I have my trees operated upon in October, 

 and but a small quantity of the old soil — not more than 

 2 inches in depth — taken out. 



They seem to succeed so well in a soil that is firm — I may 

 say hard — that in places where only a sandy loam can be had, 

 it must be rammed down most firmly ; and I am not yet 

 quite certain that the best method of treating Apricot trees 

 in pots gr(3wing in such a soil is, not to take out the soil 

 and top-dress in autumn, but to allow the trees to remain 

 in the hard and dry soil all the winter, giving them some 



water about the middle of February if mild ; and after they 

 have blossomed and set their fruit, and when it is about 

 the size of a small horse bean, to scrape off the surface soU 

 an inch in depth, so as not to disturb the young fibrous 

 roots, and give them a rich surface-dressing, to be repeated 

 during the summer as soon as it has subsided by the water- 

 ing. This method was fully carried out here the past 

 season, and nothing could be more satisfactory. My Apricots 

 were abundant and most delicious. Writing of watering 

 reminds me that it has been made to a certain extent the 

 bugbear of the pot-culture of friiit trees. If every cultivator 

 would take a lesson in watering from the Crystal Palace, 

 and have a cistern a little elevated, and gutta-percha tubing, 

 watering potted trees would cease to be a formidable ope- 

 ration. 



As far as I can see into the future, it appears highly pro- 

 bable that the attempt to grow choice fruit in the north 

 otherwise than in orchard-houses will be abandoned, and 

 the neighbourhood of such rich and populous towns as New- 

 castle, for instance, will abound in houses appropriated to 

 the culture of fruit trees; and I repeat, that even in the 

 more favoured parts of our island as regard climate, in 

 gardens with vineries and Peach-houses in abundance, the 

 Apricot-house and the Cherry-house will be found most 

 useful, and give a gardener much comfort. I must not, 

 however, omit the Apple. Only those who have seen speci- 

 mens of the fine American Apples, grown on small trees in 

 pots in an orchard-house, can have an idea of their value as 

 dessert fruit ; their size and beauty, as well as the nature 

 of their flesh, always tender, juicy, and rich, render them 

 almost unique. I have at this moment specimens of the 

 Melon Apple, part of the produce (eighteen in number) of a 

 little tree grafted on the Paradise stock, growing in an 

 11-inch pot, measuring upwards of 12 inches in circum- 

 ference, and perfectly beautiful. The Northern Spy often 

 exceeds this in size, and the Newtown Pippin grown under 

 glass is a superior fruit to those imported. It is only the 

 increased temperature and dryness of the chmate under 

 glass that gives those Apples their remarkable beauty and 

 excellence; but little care is required in their cultivation, 

 and the roughest glass-roofed shed will serve for an Apple- 

 tree house. 



Innovations in Horticulture, and its sister science A^nri- 

 culture, are always resisted, and however sound and bene- 

 ficial, make but slow progress. In this respect how unliko 

 any good mechanical invention, which is at once seized 

 upon and spread over the face of the world ! The orchard- 

 house idea was first promulgated in 1851 ; and although it 

 made its way among amateurs, many of whom having skill 

 and perseverance had great success, yet many failed from 

 thinking that fruit trees could be cultivated in common 

 greenhouses ventilated in the usual inefficient manner. Its 

 great opponents were, however, a class of men who set them 

 selves up as oracles in gardening — men with more words 

 than wisdom. I used formerly to hear persons of this class 

 say, " Oh, this is all wretched nonsense, no tree can be kept 

 in health in a pot more than two years." After twelve 

 years of close observation I am thoroughly convinced that 

 everything appertaining to orchard-house culture is sound, 

 and that those who wish to find pleasure in the cultivation 

 of fruit cannot find any gardening pursuit more agreeable 

 than its culture under glass. — T. R. 



ANOTHER WOED ON STRAWBERRIES. 



I FANCY your correspondent who signs himself "J.B.C. P.," 

 in the Journal of November 10th, in his strictures on the 

 mode of growing Strawberries as practised here, appears 

 annoyed at an expression used by me in an article con- 

 tributed to your Journal of October the 20th, in which the 

 word " barbarous " is applied to the indiscriminate removal 

 of the leaves from the Strawberry plants previous to the 

 winter setting in. Youi- correspondent, in refiitation of my 

 practice of allowing a great portion of the leaves to remain 

 on the plants until spring, adopts a rough and ready way of 

 manipulation, by the introduction of a novel instrument 

 for that purpose in lieu of a knife, in the shape of a scythe. 

 If, therefore, he considers this instrument so very effective, 

 why not apply it in mowing off all the decayed or spent 



