PRUNING, ETC. 



279 



Pruning. The fruit being borne only on wood of the 

 preceding year, one of the great objects in pruning is 

 to keep all parts of the tree furnished with a regular 

 and constant succession of annual bearing shoots. P. 

 Barry, in his " Fruit Garden," has the following, so cor- 

 rectly descriptive of the mode, that we adopt it, together 

 with a cut illustrative of buds, on which (7, D, JE, are 

 fruit buds, F, G, H, leaf buds, /, double buds, (7, triple 

 buds ; the two side buds being fruit buds, and the centre 

 one a leaf bud. By referring to the branch, it will be 

 seen that it is furnished with a certain number of wood 

 buds and fruit buds. At the base, there are always one 

 or more wood buds. 



Now, if that shoot were not pruned, all the fruit buds 

 on it would produce fruit, one, two, or three of the wood 

 buds at the top would make new shoots ; these would 

 necessarily be very weak, in consequence of the number 

 of fruit below them. At the end of the season .there 

 would be a long, vacant space, entirely destitute of a 

 young shoot or a living bud. This is the way that the 

 interior or lower parts of trees become so soon degar- 

 nished. 



But when that shoot is shortened, we will say one half, 

 the sap is retained in its lower parts, one half of the 

 fruit buds are removed, and the consequence is, that 

 large and fine fruits are obtained from those remaining ; 

 young vigorous shoots are produced from the lower buds 



to bear next 



year, 



and take 



the place of those which have 

 already borne. In this way re- 

 gular uniform crops of large 

 and fine fruit are obtained, and 

 a constant succession of young 

 shoots is kept up. 



To form the head of a stand- 

 ard Peach tree. We will sup- 

 pose it the intention to form a Form O f a low standard peach 

 standard tree, with a trunk two tree, with a stem two feet high, 



. ' , and a round, open head. 



feet in height, and a round, 



open, and symmetrical head, 

 like figure. We take a yearling tree and cut it back to within two 

 feet and a half of the ground in the Spring. Below this cut a cer- 

 tain number of shoots will be produced, from which three will be 

 selected to form the main branches or frame-work of the head. All 

 the others are rubbed off when two or three inches long or sooner. 

 At the end of the season we have a tree with three branches. 



