Jnne 9, 1870. 1 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



40S 



been in an 18-inch pot for the same time, and with the same 

 result. Last season I gave them both a shift, and I see there 

 are about twenty dozen fruit set on each, which I must, of 

 course, reduce to the usual four dozen. The great advantage 

 in having pot plants is that they are under better control, can 

 be turned round, can be removed and replaced by others in 

 case of accident or blighting, so that the house may be always 

 full of fruiting trees ; but to enable you to do this you must 

 have a few spare trees outside to replace any removed. 



Now, as to the colour and flavour of the fruit, I believe it to 

 be the fault of the operator either br not giving sufficient air, 

 or by negleoting the trees at one time and over-petting them 

 at another, or by over-cropping. I have found fruit never get 

 soft or ripen when the tree is overloaded with fruit. 



Again, watering must be attended to with judgment ; during 

 the growing period the trees must never be allowed to become 

 dry, but they should not be drenched. The water should be of 

 the temperature of the house, and during the swelling of the 

 fruit have weak liquid manure with it (or, which is better, be 

 watered through a good top-dressing of rotten dung), and take 

 good care that the water supplies nourishment to the roots, 

 instead of washing all the goodness out of the pot — a mistake 

 often made. 



I now come to the general culture of fruit trees in pots, and 

 this will apply to Peaches, Nectarines, Apricots, Figs, Plums, 

 Cherries, and Pears, for all may be treated alike ; the two latter, 

 perhaps, should be set out of doors to ripen their fruit, unless 

 the house is very airy. 



We will suppose there are no Vines on the roof, but that 

 they are on the back wall, for reasons explained hereafter, and 

 in order that the trees may have a full unshaded light ; bear 

 in mind that the trees cannot have too much light and air, and 

 that all you have to do is to keep out frost. It is, I know, very 

 tempting on a bright sunny day or two in March, or even in 

 February, to shut in the sunshine, and enjoy the warm, dry 

 air of the orchard house, when the wind is cutting from the 

 north-east, but such a procedure will surely force the buds to 

 expand prematurely, and the result will be a failing in the 

 setting of the fruit. 



Stocking the house is best done by purchasing trees that 

 have been in pots three or four years, for if you buy maiden 

 trees they will not bear well until the fourth year. I have 

 invariably found this to be the case. I have taken a maiden 

 tree — say in December, potted and pruned it as directed by 

 Mr. Rivers ; of course, it did not bear the next season, but the 

 next I have had about two fruit, and the following year a good 

 crop. It is here that amateurs think they fail, when the truth 

 is, that the tree is not old enough to bear, and it must be 

 remembered that a tree will not bear freely until the pot is full 

 of roots. My oldest trees, which bear well, scarcely require 

 any pruning, and very little pinching, and have the pots 

 crammed with roots, so that it requires great care in the 

 annual top-dressing not to injure them. But supposing the 

 amateur makes his own trees by buying " maidens," potting 

 and pruning them, as directed by Mr. Rivers, I advise him to 

 stop them much more closely than Mr. Rivers directs, for it is 

 so easy for a tree to become destitute of shoots near the centre 

 stem, and very difficult to get shoots there afterwards. All 

 stopped shoots are apt to break at the tops, or ends, only ; it is 

 therefore, necessary to stop closer at first, when forming the 

 shape of the tree. These trees need not be repotted until they 

 Bhow symptoms of making less joung wood. 



With the above treatment you cannot fail to have good- 

 shaped and fruitful trees, and having obtained them my annual 

 management is as follows : — 



In the autumn, as soon as the fruit is off — I do not wait till 

 the leaves fall — lift the pots, cut off all roots that have found 

 their way out at the bottom of the pot, take from the surface 

 all earth not filled with new roots, fill in and ram up the space 

 with a compost of one-half stiffish yellow loam and one-half 

 well-rotted manure, water well, and set the pot in the house 

 again. Keep the soil moderately moist during the winter. I 

 do not agree with Mr. Rivers in keeping them dry all that 

 season ; when I have done so the buds have invariably fallen 

 off in the following spring. 



I place my pots close together all the winter at one end of 

 the house to make room for the Chrysanthemums, which blos- 

 som till nearly Christmas, and in the back border, about a foot 

 wide under the wall, I have Russian Violets, which are removed 

 in spring, as they are apt to harbour blight. 



Nothing more will be required to be done till the following 

 February, when the buds will begin to swell (I live in Hamp- 



shire, and my house faces south-east). I then place the trees 

 in their stations, letting each into the ground about half the 

 depth of the pot, at the same time I give enough water to reach 

 the bottom of the pot, unless the weather is very cold, in which 

 case I defer the watering till the frost breaks up. As soon as 

 I can detect the fruit buds from the leaf buds I prune, to 

 keep the tree in a proper shape, if the pinching of the last 

 summer has not done this ; and here I may remark that I 

 endeavour to give my trees a hexagonal shape, as it economises 

 the space in the same way that bees do in making their combs, 

 keeping them as high as the height of the front of the house 

 will allow, which is about 4 or 5 feet. When the trees are in 

 bloom I give them a sharp shake every day to distribute the 

 pollen. When the shoots begin to appear I keep a sharp look- 

 out after blight, and if a tree is affected I cover it with some 

 light stuff and burn tobacco under it. This is best done by 

 rolling tobacco in paper which has been previously soaked in & 

 solution of saltpetre, but care must be taken not to scorch the 

 tree, and it is best to remove the red-hot ashes as soon as the 

 smoke is over. 



This spring my family collected the lady-birds, and it is sur- 

 prising how they have kept down the aphis ; but the difficulty 

 is to retain them in the house. 



As soon as the fruit is set I begin syringing ; at first in the 

 morning only, and afterwards in the morning at 7.30, and in 

 the evening at 5.30. This should be done upwards under the 



As soon as the shoots have made five or six leaves I pinch 

 them back to two, three, four, or five leaves, as I have occasion 

 to form the shape of the tree. 



When the fruit is about the size of a small hazel nut, I 

 scrape off the surface earth in each pot, and give a good top- 

 dressing of well-rotted manure lj or 2 inches thick. This I 

 water till it is in a pulp, for two reasons — first, in order to 

 settle it down, and, secondly, to make sure that the ball in the 

 pot is not left dry. This remains on until the autumnal top- 

 dressing before mentioned, and once in about four weeks I give 

 a tablespoonful of Standen's manure. This, with the top-dress- 

 ing, insures a supply of nourishment to the roots every time 

 the tree is watered. 



As to watering no stated time can be given, the trees mnst 

 not be allowed to want water. In some hot seasons they must 

 have it every day, and in dull weather, perhaps not once a-week. 

 Experience only can guide us in this. 



The next thing will be the thinning of the fruit ; let this be 

 done freely, according to the size, strength, and age of the tree, 

 and it is better to thin too much than too little. 



I now come to a most important point — lifting the pots. Mr. 

 Rivers gives the day of the month on which they should be 

 lifted, but he may almost as well say on what day the fruit 

 shall ripen, for the trees will not all grow alike, and at stated 

 times. My own experience is, that the less they are lifted the 

 better, for if a pot is not lifted often, the roots may strike so 

 deeply into the soil that the check the tree receives in break- 

 ing off these roots is so great that the fruit is sure to fail. I 

 had a proof of this a few years ago, when looking round the 

 orchard house with the man I occasionally had to work in the 

 kitchen garden. I happened to say, " It is time these trees: 

 were looked over to see if any require lifting." I was then 

 called away for an hour or so, and on going into the orchard 

 house I saw four or five trees drooping as though they were 

 dying, and on inquiry I found the man had taken upon himself 

 to lift every pot, tearing off all roots that had struck out of the 

 pots, and the consequence was, that the fruit on those trees 

 never became soft or ripened. On the other hand, if the pots 

 are lifted often the roots have no c! aice of getting into the 

 soil, so that I have come to the conclusion that it is better not 

 to lift the pots at all after the fruit has commenced stoning ; 

 if the shoots are properly stopped there is not much fear of 

 the trees growing too luxuriantly. With trees having no fruit 

 on them the case is different. 



There is now nothing more to attend to all the summer than 



giving air and water, thinning the fruit, stopping the shoots, 



syringing, and keeping off blight. To kill the aphis I have 



found nothing better than tobacco smoke, and to destroy the 



red spider the syringe is the best weapon. I have seen them 



feeding amongst sulphur apparently unconcerned, but I have 



never failed to keep them down with water. If, however, the 



trees are attacked by red spider after the fruit is ripe, the 



] syringe cannot so easily be used, and one is obliged to let them 



I have their own way a little, or run the risk of spoiling a few 



1 fruits ; do not turn the trees out of doors after the fruit is off 



