FRUIT TREES FOR ESPALIERS AND DWARFS. 393 



pronged fork, the trees will bear abundantly ; but if the ground is dug 

 and cropped, or if flowers are grown on it, the roots of the fruit-trees 

 being forced to descend to the subsoil, and to produce more wood than 

 they can properly ripen, and the trees being thus forced to take a habit 

 of luxuriance rather than of fruitfulness, the fruit produced will be few 

 and without flavour. 



The trees should be planted from three to five feet from the walk, 

 and the path at the inside should be at an equal distance from them. 

 This will give a border of from six to ten feet in width, besides the 

 width of the path ; and if the ground is not dug and the trees are carefully 

 trained, an immense quantity of fruit will be produced. Many prefer 

 conical, pillar, or bush-formed trees to espaliers, and when tastefully 

 arranged, and laden with flowers or fruits, they impart a great beauty 

 and dignity to a kitchen garden, either in lines or in compartments by 

 themselves. As the spurred-in trees will grow twelve feet high, and if 

 on dwarfing-stocks, and the border be not dug, will bear abundantly, we 

 know no mode in which so much fruit can be produced on so limited a 

 surface of ground, excepting always the espalier mode, in which the 

 trees do not occupy above a foot in width. 



Espalier-rails are variously constructed. The simplest mode is to 

 drive in stakes, which may be of young larch trees, or of any other 

 young wood disbarked and steeped in Burnett's composition, at two 

 feet apart, with temporary stakes of a slight description between ; the 

 latter being for the purpose of 



f j i r " l g- OOO. 



training forward the growing shoot 

 of each horizontal branch from one 

 permanent stake to another, during 

 the growing season. Thus in fig. 

 333, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, represent 



permanent stakes, and a* b, tern- 



Progressive espalier-vail. 

 porary ones. These latter may be 



removed from between Nos. 1 and 2 when they are no longer of any use 

 there, and placed between Nos. 2 and 3 till the growing shoots obtain 

 a bearing on the stake No. 3, when they may be removed to the space 

 between Nos. 3 and 4, and so on. 



Another mode is to drive in stakes of the proper height, and eight 

 inches or nine inches apart, beginning at the centre of each tree, and 

 extending them on each side as the tree advances in growth. In the 

 first stage of training, the stakes require to stand as close together as 

 twelve inches or fourteen inches, and to be arranged in regular order 

 to the full height of five feet, with a rail slightly fastened on the top ol 

 them for neatness' sake, as well as to steady them. If stakes of small 

 ash, Spanish chestnut, or the like, from coppices or thinnings of young 

 plantations, be used, they will last for three or four years, provided 

 they are from one and a half to two inches in diameter at a foot from 

 the bottom. They need not be extended further, in the first instance, 

 than the distance it is considered probable the trees may reach in 

 three years' growth : at that period, or the following season, they will 

 all require to be removed, and the new ones may be placed on each 



