POMACES. X. PYRUS. 



621 



walls." Knight and M'Phail recommend a strong, deep, loamy 

 soil, and the latter a high wall for training the better sorts. 



Final planting is performed any time, in mild weather, from 

 October to March ; standards are placed from 25 to 40 feet 

 apart every way ; half standards from 20 to 30 feet ; and dwarf 

 standards, in borders, from 15 to 20 feet from stem to stem. 

 Wall and espalier trees are planted from 15 to 30 feet, according 

 as they may have been grafted or budded on pear or quince 

 stocks. 



Mode of bearing.- As in the apple tree, " The pear tree," 

 M'Phail observes, " does not produce blossoms on the former 

 year's wood, as several other sorts of trees do. Its blossom- 

 buds are formed upon spurs growing out of wood not younger 

 than one year old, and consequently, projecting spurs all over 

 the tree must be left for that purpose." " In some pears," Mr. 

 Knight observes, " the fruit grows only on the inside of those 

 branches which are exposed to the sun and air ; in others it 

 occupies every part of the tree." 



Pruning and training standards. " Permit these to extend 

 on all sides freely. Several years may elapse before any cross- 

 placed, very irregular, or crowded branches, dead or worn out 

 bearers, require pruning, which give in winter or spring. Keep 

 the head moderately open in the middle." " Pruning," Knight 

 observes, " is not often wanted in the culture of the pear tree, 

 which is rarely much encumbered with superfluous branches ; 

 but in some kinds, whose form of growth resembles the apple 

 tree, it will sometimes be found beneficial." 



Wall trees and espaliers will require a summer and winter 

 pruning. 



Summer pruning, " While the spray is young and soft, but 

 not until the wood-shoots can be distinguished from spurs, rub 

 off the foreright, the disorderly, spongy, and superfluous shoots 

 of the year, rather than let them grow woody, so as to require 

 the knife. Retain some of the most promising, well-placed, 

 lateral, and terminal shoots, always keeping a leader to each 

 main branch, where the space will permit. Leave the greater 

 number on young trees not fully supplied with branches. Train 

 in these at their full length all summer, in order to have a 

 choice of young wood in the winter pruning. Occasionally, on 

 old trees, or others where any considerable vacancy occurs, some 

 principal contiguous shoot may be shortened in June to a few 

 eyes, for a supply of several new shoots the same season." 



Winter pruning " may be performed any time from the begin- 

 ning of November until the beginning of April. If on young 

 trees or others a further increase of branches is necessary to 

 fill up either the prescribed space or any casual vacuity, retain 

 some principal shoots of last summer, to be trained for that 

 purpose. As, however, many young shoots will have arisen on 

 the wood branches and bearers, of which a great part are abun- 

 dant and disorderly, but which have received some regulation 

 in the summer pruning, we must now cut these out close to 

 the mother branches, while we are preserving the best in the 

 more open parts. Examine the parent branches, and if any 

 are very irregular or defective in growth, either cut them out 

 close, or prune them to some eligible lateral to supply the 

 place ; or if any branches be over extended, they may be 

 pruned in to such a lateral, or to a good fruit-bud. Cut out 

 the least regular of the too crowded, also any casually declined 

 bearers, with decayed, cankery, and dead wood. The retained 

 supply of laterals and terminals should be laid in as much at 

 length as the limits allow, in order to furnish a more abundant 

 quantity of fruit-buds. During both courses of pruning, be 

 particularly careful to preserve all the orderly fruit spurs, emit- 

 ted at the sides and ends of the bearers ; if, however, any large, 

 rugged, projecting spurs, and woody barren stumps or snags 

 occur, cut them clean away close to the branches, which will 



render the bearers more productive of fruit-buds, and regular 

 in appearance. As each tree is pruned, nail or tie the branches 

 or shoots to the wall or trellis. If afterwards, in consequence 

 of either pruning out improper or decayed wood, or of former 

 insufficient training, there are any material vacuities or irregu- 

 larities in the arrangement, unnail the misplaced and contiguous 

 branches and lay them in order." 



Mr. Knight's mode of training the pear tree is as follows : 

 " A young pear stock, which had two lateral branches upon 

 each side, and was about 6 feet high, was planted against a wall 

 early in the spring of 1810; and it was grafted in each of its 

 lateral branches, two of which sprang out of the stem, about 4 

 feet from the ground, and the others at the summit in the fol- 

 lowing year. The shoots these grafts produced were about a 

 foot long, were trained downwards, the undermost nearly per- 

 pendicular, and the uppermost just below the horizontal line, 

 placing them at such distances, that the leaves of one shoot did 

 not at all shade those of another. In the next year the same 

 mode of training was continued, and the year following I ob- 

 tained an abundant crop of fruit. 



" An old St. Germain pear tree, of the spurious kind, had 

 been trained in a fan-form against a north-west wall in my gar- 

 den, and the central branches, as usually happens in old trees 

 thus trained, had long reached the top of the wall, and had 

 become wholly unproductive. The other brandies afforded but 

 very little fruit, and that never acquiring maturity, was conse- 

 quently of no value, so that it was necessary to change the 

 variety as well as to render the tree productive. To attain 

 these purposes, every branch which did not want at least 20 

 degrees of being perpendicular, was taken out at its base, and 

 the spurs upon every other branch, which I intended to retain, 

 were taken off closely with the saw and chisel. Into these 

 branches, at their subdivisions, grafts were inserted at different 

 distances from the root, and some so near the extremities of the 

 branches, that the tree extended as widely in the autumn after 

 it was grafted, as it did in the preceding year. The grafts were 

 also so disposed, that every part of the space the tree previously 

 covered, was equally well supplied with young wood. As soon 

 in the succeeding summer as the young shoots had attained suffi- 

 cient length, they were trained almost perpendicularly downwards, 

 between the larger branches and the wall to which they were 

 nailed. The most perpendicular remaining branch upon each 

 side was grafted about 4 feet below the top of the wall, which is 

 12 feet high, and the young shoots, which the grafts upon these 

 afforded, were trained inwards, and bent down to occupy the 

 space from which the old central branches had been taken away, 

 and therefore very little vacant space any where remained in the 

 end of the first autumn. A few blossoms, but not any fruit, 

 were produced by several of the grafts in the succeeding spring ; 

 but in the following year and subsequently I have had abundant 

 crops, equally dispersed over every part of the tree." 



Heading down and pruning old pear trees. " The method of 

 pruning^jear trees," Forsyth observes, " is very different from 

 that practised for apple trees in general. The constant practice 

 has been to have great spurs, as big as a man's arm, standing 

 out from the walls, from a foot to 1 8 inches or upwards." The 

 constant cutting of these spurs, he says, brings on the canker, 

 and the fruit produced is small, spotted, and kernelly. For- 

 syth's practice with such trees was to cut them down, and renew 

 the soil at their roots, and he refers to a beurre pear, restored 

 from an inch and a half of bark, which, in 1796, bore 450 fine 

 large pears, &c. 



C. Harrison and various other gardeners adopt a mode of 

 keeping only short spurs, by which much larger fruit is pro- 

 duced. According to this plan, each spur bears only once, 

 when it is cut out, and succeeded by an embryo bud at its base. 



