342 



TRAINING. 



tightened by one of the handy little implements known as raidisseurs. 

 This raidisseur will tighten several hundred feet of the wire, which 

 need not be thicker than strong twine, and of the same sort as that 

 recommended for walls and espaliers. The galvanized wire known as 

 No. 14 is the most suitable for general use. At intervals a support is 

 placed under the wire in the form of a bit of slender iron with an eye 

 in it, and on this the apple on the French paradise is trained, thus 

 forming the simplest and best and commonest phase of the cordon 

 system. This is the kind best suited for making edgings around the 

 squares in kitchen gardens, &c. 



Fig. 323. 



Fig. 324. 



The simple horizontal cordon. 



" Cordons are trained against walls, espaliers, and in many ways, but 

 the most popular form of all, and the best and most useful, is the little 

 line of apple-trees acting as an edging to the quarters in the kitchen 

 and fruit garden. By selecting good kinds and training them in this 

 way, abundance of the finest apples may be grown without having any 

 of the large apple-trees or those of any other form in the garden to 

 shade or occupy its surface. The bilateral cordon is useful for the 

 same purposes as the simple one, and especially adapted to the bottoms 

 of walls, bare spaces between the fruit trees, the fronts of pits, or any 

 low naked wall with a warm exposure. As in many cases the lower 



parts of walls in gardens are 

 quite naked, this form of 

 cordon offers an opportunity 

 for covering them with what 

 will yield a certain and 

 valuable return. It is by 

 this method that the finest- 

 coloured and best French 

 and American apples, sold in 

 Covent Garden and in the 

 Paris fruit shops at such 

 high prices, are grown. I 



The cordon on low sunny wall of plant- house. nave seen tnem f ten in 

 In this way Calville Blanc, Reinette du Canada, Covent Garden and in Re- 

 the Lady Apple, the Melon, Mother, Newtown g en t Street marked two and 

 Pippin, and all the finer and tenderer French, ?u , vir v 



American, and British apples may be grown to ^ *^ }1 S* <&, and 

 perfection. M. Lepere nls, of Montreuil, 



once told me that they 



have there obtained four francs each for the best fruit of the 



