334 TRAINING. 



manner to produce horizontals the following year ; and so on every 

 year, Until the tree has attained the height of the wall. The other 

 mode of proceeding with the stem is to train it in an upright direction, 

 and to cut it off, or shorten it, as at , in the last figure, from nine 

 inches to eighteen inches every year ; rubbing off all the buds, except 

 the three Which are best placed at the end to furnish two horizontals and 

 a leader for the following year. This is not only the most simple, but 

 perhaps the most certain, mode of providing horizontals of due strength, 

 and at the distances wanted. Indeed this mode of shortening the 

 centre branch must be adopted with all fruit trees, except the peach. 

 The peach-tree, with care and attention, may be trained on the ser- 

 pentine plan, so as to place the horizontals with great regularity. 

 When it is thus trained, there is this advantage the current of the 

 sap being checked in the buds, a larger portion is sent into the hori- 

 zontals, and the sap is more equally divided ; they are thus sustained 

 in greater luxuriance at the lower part of the tree, and sometimes two 

 tiers of horizontals may be obtained in one year. But as almost all 

 other trees are prone to form their shoots at the ends of the last year's 

 shoots, the bending will not always force out shoots where wanted. 

 In order to secure this, therefore, the leading shoots must be shortened 

 every year, down to the place where it is desired to form the hori- 

 zontals ; and even in this mode of forcing out branches (by shortening) 



the upright flow of the 



F * 801 - sap may be checked 



by bending the leader 

 -> each year from one side 

 to another, on an in- 

 clination of about 45, 

 as in fig. 301, which, as 

 indicated by the num- 

 bers 1 to 5, is of five 

 years' growth. Pro- 

 Wavy-training, fifth year. ceeding in this manner, 



a tree will advance in 



height only by a tier of horizontals each year, and hence it will appear 

 to fill the upper part of the wall but slowly ; but it must be considered, 

 that the time you lose in covering the upper part of the wall, you 

 gain in width on the lower part. Moreover, by laying down the first 

 branches to such lengths, you obtain a space sufficient, the second or 

 third year, to dispose of every inch of wood the tree makes, without 

 crowding it too closely together ; and indeed the means of appro- 

 priating to a profitable purpose all the nutriment extracted from the 

 soil by the tree. From a tree trained in this manner above seven 

 hundred perfectly ripened peaches have been gathered the fifth year 

 of training, all growing within six feet of the surface of the border. 

 "When a tree is full grown, it will have the appearance of fig. 302. 

 Particular attention must be paid to the rubbing off all or most of 

 the " shoots, as soon as they appear in the spring, from the front and 

 under sides of the horizontals, as well as from all other parts of the 



