186 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



especially, early fruiting is one, and the cutting back twice 

 must delay three years at any rate, while we have known the 

 first laid branch actually bear fruit the second. PerhajDs a 

 mixture of the two practices is the best. We should bear in 

 mind, that whenever a useless shoot is allowed to grow, it 

 helps to weaken all the useful ones, and therefore that by dis- 

 budding we save the tree from making wood merely to be 

 pruned off. Again, we might profitably bear in mind that 

 every cut is a wound that may bring disease, and that the 

 more snags there are about a tree, the more subject it is to 

 damage ; and it may always be found that peaches and nec- 

 tarines grow finer in those portions of the tree least maimed 

 by the knife. We have, when grafted or budded trees have 

 been in the places they were to remain in, very successfully 

 conducted them through the first year's growth by judiciously 

 stojDping a main shoot at an early stage, and disbudding every 

 useless beginning — leaving, in fact, no shoots but those we 

 really wanted, and thereby throwing the whole of the growth 

 into proper branches. There is a vast difference between not 

 using the knife as a rule, and not using it because you take 

 care that it is not wanted. Suppose a peach or a nectarine 

 budded, and in the place it is to remain in against the wall : 

 by the time the bud had shot to three or four pau' of leaves, 

 the top is pinched out ; laterals immediately break out on 

 both sides, and you have a little tree the first year, every 

 branch of which may be nailed into its place, beginning with 

 the two lower ones quite horizontal, the next and next rather 

 fan-fashion, but still keeping them well down, and the knife 

 not used at all, unless to cut out here and there a stray wir}^ 

 shoot that is not wanted, but has been overlooked. The next 

 year, as soon as the buds move, go over the tree, and cut off 

 every one that aylQ be useless, if grown. This disbudding 

 system wonderfully helps the growth of the useful branches, 

 and helps to nurture the tree ; for it stands to reason that if 

 an enormous quantity of growth has to be cut away after- 

 v.^ards, it was wrong to let useful portions of the tree suffer to 

 make wood only to be cut away; besides which, all stone 

 fruit-trees are more or less healthy according as they have 

 been more or less carefully managed ; those which have been 

 wounded most being the most liable to gum and canker : and, 

 moreover, the operation is so easily performed. So, also, if 

 we want lateral shoots to fill any particular place on a wall, 



