806 PRUNING. 



with, excepting for cutting out diseased or decaying shoots. Disbudding 

 is one of the most important summer operations in the management of 

 wall-trees. By disbudding in summer, we prevent the necessity of 

 much shortening and thinning at the winter pruning. In removing 

 the buds care should be taken not to injure the bark of the shoot. 

 The buds ought not all to be disbudded at the same time ; the fore- 

 right ones should be first removed, and the others successively, at 

 intervals of several days, in order not to check the circulation of sap 

 by a too great privation of foliage at once. Extent should likewise be 

 given to the w r all-tree to exhaust itself by growth, and so bring on 

 maturity. If the border is not too rich, this would be better than tearing 

 off a great mass of breast-wood. More young shoots should be laid in, 

 and they should be left longer at pruning-time in the strongest-growing 

 sorts. Weak-growing sorts, apt to fruit, should be encouraged with 

 manure, or we may have dry mealy, in place of large succulent fruit. 



Disleafing. By taking the leaves off a growing shoot as fast as they 

 are unfolded, no buds are matured in their axils ; and thus while the 

 superfluous vigour of the tree is expended, no sap is returned to the 

 root. The practice consequently rapidly reduces the strength of over- 

 luxuriant trees. If trees are not very luxuriant indeed, one year of 

 this treatment will reduce them to a moderate degree of strength. As 

 buds are only formed in the axils of leaves, probably much disbudding 

 and pruning might be saved by disleafing as soon as the leaves are 

 developed ; but it must always be borne in mind that every leaf has not 

 only the particular office to perform of nourishing the bud in its axil, 

 but the general one of contributing to the nourishment of all that part 

 of the tree which is between it and the farthest extremities of the roots. 

 Hence, in particular cases, where it is desirable to give additional 

 vigour to the roots, instead of disleafing or disbudding a weak tree, 

 all the leaves and shoots which it produces, even the breast-wood 

 and upright shoots, which the French call gourmands, ought to be 

 encouraged within certain limits. Disleafing is therefore not to be 

 generally commended. It may, however, be usefully applied in various 

 instances to the destruction of perennial weeds, both on the ground and 

 in water, by cutting their leaves off the moment they appear, and 

 before they are even partially developed. Docks, thistles, rushes, 

 horse-tails, and such weeds in pastures, might be destroyed in this 

 mode at less expense than by any other. Even couch-grass, that pest 

 of gardeners in a superlative degree, may be so destroyed, notwith- 

 standing its creeping underground stems, if no green leaves are allowed 

 to be formed ; as might the bulrushes, bur-reeds, common reeds, and 

 other weeds which rise up from the bottom of ponds ; care being taken 

 to repeat the operation as long as the weeds continue to grow, and 

 never to let them exceed an inch or two in height. 



Slitting and splitting the bark of hide-bound trees may also be classed 

 under a mode of pruning; it is now, however, but seldom done, the prac- 

 tice being of doubtful utility. It consists of a number of longitudinal 

 slits, right through the bark, from the branches to the bottom of the bole. 



Bruising, or breaking down the branches of trees, has sometimes 



