September IG, 1879. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



241 



TEAINING HAKDY FRUIT TEEES. 



INCE the introduction of orchard houses and 

 similar straeturcs I am afraid that the cul- 

 tivation of hardy fruits has gone hackward ; 

 it is a great pity if saoh is the case, and I 

 would advise young gardeners to look them- 

 selves up a little in this matter, for their 

 employers sooner or later will surely make 

 a demand in this direction. Orchard houses 

 are very useful structures, and to the ama- 

 teur who can attend to them himself I be- 

 lieve they tring health, strength, and length of days ; 

 they create a taste for the purest pleasures of this life, 

 and produce an abundance of the most harmless of luxu- 

 ries. But let not the professional gaidener think that 

 orchard houses will supersede the use of garden walls, 

 and that because he has one or two of these structures 

 be can afford to look disdainfully on outdoor fruits. I 

 should require some acres of orchard houses to meet my 

 demands, and by experience I know that the produce of 

 orchard houses is comparatively nothing in return for 

 labour as compared with the labour and produce of well- 

 managed outdoor trees. Moreover, though some of the 

 fruit from the orchard house may be superior to that 

 grown outside, the greater portion is vastly inferior. This 

 is specially the case with Peaches and Nectarines when 

 grown in bush form ; for unless these fruits have the full 

 sunlight on them through the whole period of their 

 growth they are never fit to eat. For this reason, for 

 indoor culture, the system of flat training is vastly supe- 

 rior to training as bushes. By well-managed outdoor 

 trees I do not mean those trained in the most artistic 

 forms — they ai-e mere playthings for those people who 

 have no better occupations — but those trained in such a 

 manner as to produce the greatest quantity of good fruit 

 in the shortest time. The man who would spend several 

 years in training his trees to fancy shapes, and produce 

 little or no fruit, looking on fruit-producing, in fact, as 

 a secondary affair, is more fit to be a milliner than a 

 gardener. 



I believe it was Loudon who said that a man would 

 never make a gardener who was afraid to use the knife. 

 Things have changed since Loudon's time, and the best 

 modern gardeners do not use a knife once where Loudon's 

 contemporaries would have cut-away waggonloads. And 

 yet there is room for more improvement in this direction. 

 The average British gardener has still too much liking 

 for a good knife ; he still Ukes to allow his trees to waste 

 their energies by making a great quantity of useless 

 wood to be afterwards cut away. If he buys trained 

 trees for walls he must cut them back for a year or two 

 in the hope of getting them into some perfect form as 

 drawn out for him in gardening books. He may cut and 

 be may hope, be will never realise the picture ; such trees 

 only exist on paper, and it is as well to acknowledge the 

 fact at the outset, and make up our minds, instead of 

 attempting impossibilities, to have the wall covered in 

 two or three years and a good crop of fruit on it. 



No. V55.-V0L, SXIX , New Sebies, 



Fairly-trained trees of Plums and Cherries, and also 

 Peaches and Apricots where these do well, need no cutting 

 back at all when received from the nursery, unless the 

 wood is not ripened, and in that case they are hardly 

 worth having. Planted in November, and encouraged to 

 grow in the following summer by disbudding where the 

 shoots are not required, and training-in at full length 

 wherever there is space to be filled — never minding 

 whether they are laterals or main shoots, they all answer 

 the purpose alike — average trees will always fill a wall in 

 three or four years, and often a good quantity of fruit 

 can be obtained the second year after planting. If the 

 trees are at all vigorous it does them good to fruit them, 

 but fruit should not be left on any that are weakly. 



The Green Gage and Jefferson Plums will often bear 

 nicely the second season after planting, as will also the 

 Morello Cherry. 



All wall trees require disbudding in their young stage, 

 for having been trained in the open ground with bght 

 alike all round them, they at first make as many buds on 

 the side next the wall as they do on the front side. Those 

 buds next the wall if not carefully removed are sure to 

 produce injurious results. For laying-in at full length 

 preference should be given to those shoots produced on 

 the upper side of the main branches ; those, however, on 

 the lower side will do nearly as well, and must be used 

 when the space cannot otherwise be filled. ' Those shoots 

 which are inclined to grow straight out from the wall 

 should generally be kept hard pinched, and if they do 

 not fruit they will at least shade the stems and encourage 

 their development. — -William Taylor. 



TAKING-UP AND STORING POTATOES. 



I AM afraid that I cannot give "Beta" the precise 

 information be needs as to "when, bow, and at what stage 

 of growth the haulms can be pulled away from Potatoes 

 without affecting the flavour and value of the tubers." 

 This is a matter which it is impossible to make clear on 

 paper in a way to suit all growers and circumstances. In 

 my previous letter the question of pulling off the haulm 

 was subsidiary, my primary object being to sound a note 

 of alarm on the danger of too thickly storing newly-dug 

 tubers. 



When I speak of removing the haulm from a crop to 

 prevent the disease, I mean that I would ao soon take up 

 the crop itself if I had time to do so before the dreaded 

 heavy summer and autumn rains. That presupposes the 

 tubers to have attained a useful size. To take them up 

 or stop their growth before then is wasteful, and to leave 

 them longer, if heavy rains and close, warm, muggy 

 weather is pending, is often ruin. In the matter of 

 garden crops, and except for purposes of experiment, I 

 have not had any diseased Potatoes for nearly twenty 

 years. By growing not late varieties and continued 

 watchfulness I feel myself quite competent to evade the 

 murrain. 



It is seldom that injury is done to a crop until the 

 Potato plant has just passed the zenith of its vigour. If, 



No. 1407.— Vol., Lrv„ Old Series. 



