PLUM. 125 



neglect In his American Gardener, paragraph 320, he 

 asks, " How is it that we see so few Plums in America, 

 when the markets are supplied with cart-loads in such a 

 chilly, shady, and blighty country as England V 



I would answer this query by informing the reader, that 

 the inhabitants of our parent country, with a view to derive 

 the full benefit of the sun's rays for the cultivation of Plums, 

 Peaches, Nectarines, and such other fruit as require extra 

 heat, train their trees against walls, fences, or trellis-work; 

 and from their having these means of support, gardeners 

 have no inducement to plant them deeper than is necessary; 

 whereas, from the circumstance of the American climate 

 being sufficiently warm to ripen those fruits on standard 

 trees, they are generally so cultivated. Many persons, to 

 save the trouble of staking, or otherwise supporting their 

 trees, plant them too deep, and thus defeat the operations 

 of nature. That this is a prevalent eiror, has been shown 

 in the articles Nectarine and Peach, to which the reader is 

 referred for a more concise view of the subject. 



New varieties of the Plum are produced from seed ; and 

 the old kinds are generally propagated by budding on stocks 

 of free-growing Plums, in preference to grafting, because 

 Plum trees are very apt to gum wherever large wounds are 

 made in them. All the sorts produce their fruit on small 

 natural spurs rising at the ends and along the sides of the 

 bearing shoots of one, two, or three years' growth. In most 

 sorts, new fruit branches are two years old before the spurs 

 bear. The same branches and spurs continue fruitful, in 

 proportion to the time which they take to come into bear- 

 ing. 



After the formation of the head is begun, it takes from 

 two to six years before the different sorts come into bearing. 

 Standards must be allowed to expand in free growth, occa- 

 sionally pruning long ramblers and irregular cross branches. 

 In annual pruning, thin crowded parts, cut away worn out 

 bearers, and all decayed and cankery wood. The Plum 



13* 



