83 PRUNING 



with a new layer of bark. Many compositions have been ir 

 fashion, abroad, for this purpose, which, under our summer sun 

 and wintry frosts, are nearly worthless, as they generally crack 

 and fall off in a single year. The following is a cheap and ad- 

 mirable application, which we recommend to all cultivators of 

 fruit trees. 



Composition for wounds made in pruning. Take a quart of 

 alcohol and dissolve in it as much gum shellac as will make a 

 liquid of the consistence of paint. Apply this to the wound with 

 a common painter's brush ; always paring the wound smoothly 

 first with the knife. The liquid becomes perfectly hard, adheres 

 closely, excludes the air perfectly, and is affected by no changes 

 of weather ; while at the same timo its thinness offers no resist- 

 ance to the lip of new bark that gradually closes over the wound. 

 If the composition is kept in a well corked bottle, sufficiently 

 wide mouthed to admit the brush, it will always be ready for use 

 and suited to the want of the moment. 



2. Pruning to induce fruitfulness. 



When a young fruit tree is too luxuriant, employing all its 

 energies in making vigorous shoots, but forming few or no blos- 

 som buds, and producing no fruit, we have it in our power by 

 different modes of pruning to lessen this over-luxuriance, and 

 force it to expend its energies in fruit-bearing. The most direct 

 and successful mode of doing this is by pruning the roots, a pro- 

 ceeding recently brought into very successful practice by Euro- 

 pean gardeners. 



Root pruning has the effect of at once cutting off a consider- 

 able supply of the nourishment formerly afforded by the roots of 

 a tree. The leaves, losing part of their usual food, are neither 

 able to grow as rapidly as before, nor to use all the nutritious 

 matter already in the branches ; the branches therefore become 

 more stunted in their growth, the organizable matter accumu- 

 lates, and fruit buds are directly formed. The energies of the 

 tree are no longer entirely carried off in growth, and the return- 

 ing sap is employed in producing fruit buds for the next year. 



Root pruning should be performed in autumn or winter, and 

 it usually consists in laying bare the roots and cutting off 

 smoothly at a distance of a few feet from the trunk, (in propor- 

 tion to the size of the tree) the principal roots. Mr. Rivers, an 

 English nurseryman of celebrity, who has practised this mode 

 with great success, digs a trench early in November, eighteen 

 inches deep, round his trees to be root pruned, cutting off the 

 roots with a sharp spade. By following this practice every 

 year, he not only throws his trees into early bearing, but forces 

 Apples, Pears, and the like, grafted on their own roots, to be- 

 come prolific dwarfs, growing only six feet apart, trained in a 



