578 THE PEACH AND NECTARINE. 



same time that he can nail one tree to the bricks. The chief advantage 

 of wiring the walls, however, is not the saving of time, but of the 

 face of the bricks or the mortar joints of the walls, which are dis- 

 figured and destroyed by incessant nailing. When nails and shreds are 

 used, the latter should be of a darker colour, and narrower than are gene- 

 rally used, because they look neater, and they last long enough, as they 

 are never applied a second time. Where the peach is grown only for 

 tarts it may be tried as an espalier or standard. In the midland and 

 southern counties such trees would ripen a crop. Where there is a 

 choice of plants from a nursery, trees three or four years trained, if 

 grafted on plum stocks, may be chosen, and the trees, if carefully re- 

 moved in October or November, will bear a few fruit next year. In 

 planting never dig a pit, because, by the sinking of the loose soil, the 

 tree will in two or three years be much too deep ; spread the roots 

 carefully out on the surface of the border, and cover them three inches 

 with soil. This is the best mode of planting all fruit trees and fruit 

 shrubs whatever, which are planted on newly-trenched ground. Where 

 a wall to be covered with peaches is upwards of twelve feet high, 

 riders may be planted as before recommended, and these should always 

 be trees which have been several years trained, the object being to cover 

 the walls as soon as possible. Permanent dwarf trees may be planted 

 from ten to twenty feet apart, according as the wall is twelve feet or 

 fifteen feet in height. 



Mode of Bearing, Pruning, <kc. The blossom-buds in all the dif- 

 ferent varieties of peach, nectarine, and almond are produced almost 

 exclusively on the wood of the preceding year ; and that wood seldom 

 produces blossom a second time. There are, however, occasional 

 small spurs produced on two-year-old wood, but these cannot be 

 reckoned on. The great art in pruning the peach, therefore, is to pro- 

 duce an annual crop of young wood all over the tree, which can only 

 be done by shortening back lateral shoots on every part of it. In the 

 course of the spring and summer, all the shoots that are not wanted 

 to bear the following year should be disbudded that is, the buds 

 entirely removed as soon as they begin to expand ; and in the course of 

 the winter pruning following, all the shoots left ought to be shortened 

 according to their strength and situation, the weakest cut to one or two 

 buds, the less weak to one-half or more of their length, and the strongest 

 shortened one -fourth or one-third of their length. According to the 

 commoner modes of fan-training, these shoots are left all over the 

 tree, as equally as can be done by the eye, or as the shoots produced 

 admit of; but, according to Seymour's mode of training, they are left 

 at regular and fixed distances, and the buds being all removed be- 

 tween these fixed points, no laterals are produced anywhere else ; so 

 that the tree once fully formed on this system, nothing can be more 

 regular than its future treatment. Notwithstanding these advantages, 

 Seymour's system has not been adopted to such an extent as might have 

 been expected, and perfectly-formed trees continue rare. 



Mr. Callow's Mode of Training. By the common fan manner of 

 training, it is found that the lower branches soon become weak, from 



