1851. 



THE GENESEE FA-RMER. 



167 



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iBrtiriiltaral Defirtirinit. 



EDITED BY P. BARRY. 



THE SUMMER MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT TREES. 



Wherever we see trees beautiful in form, and in a 

 condition of early fruitfulness, we may be assured 

 that the person who conducts them is not wholly ig- 

 norant of the means by wliich growth and fruitful- 

 ness are regulated. We have never met with a 

 Frencli gardener who had any practice in tree grow- 

 ing, who could not deliver a very interesting lecture 

 on the whys and wherefores of the various operations 

 he had been accustomed to perform in the propaga- 

 tion and training of trees ; and it is this theoretical 

 or philosophical knowledge that gives to French gar- 

 dening its acknowledged superiority. Everywhere, in 

 their gardens and in the essays we find in their peri- 

 odicals,- we see evidences of the fact that tree-culture, 

 there has been taught, philosophically and practically, 

 by such men as Thouin, D'Albret, Dubribal, Har- 

 dy, Cappe, and others who not only stand high as veg- 

 etable phisiologists, but as practical arboriculturists. 

 Gardeners trained under these men, in the various 

 public gardens of the nation, are scattered over the 

 country, giving beautiful practical illustrations of the 

 training they have received. Those who have been 

 fortunate enough to enjoy a ramble through French 

 gardens, know this very well.. English gardeners are 

 rather unwilling to admit that they are behind in this, 

 but they are, and they may just as well acknowledge 

 it ; and we can tell them another department in which 

 Frenchmen are in advance, and for the same reason 

 — that the subject is considered by them more pliilo- 

 sophically. We refer now to the packmg of trees 

 for long jom'nei/s. Nurserymen in this country, who 

 have imported from both countries, know something 

 of tliis. We rarely suffer from loss in our French 

 importations, but we rarely fail to suffer from our 

 English, although the passages from England are 

 generally much shorter than from France. When 

 the two packages are opened side by side — we mean 

 the French and English — the difference of the two 

 systems is at once observable, and any one, however 

 unskilled in such matters, would at once decide that 

 the Frenchman was more thoroughly acquainted with 

 the conditions of vegetable life, and the means of 

 preserving it, under certain circumstances, A few 

 English nurserymen who have become acquainted 

 with the French modes of packing, have learnt to 

 send us out articles pretty safe, but the greater num- 

 ber of them cannot be persuaded to abandon their old 

 routine, although they are told over and over again 

 that it is ruinous to their trade and their customers. 



These are matters, however, that we did not intend 

 to touch upon now, but they occurred to us as illus- 

 trative of the importance to all men who desire to 

 manage trees successfully in any way, whether in a 

 growing or dormant state, of understanding their 

 nature. 



The summer management of trees is everywhere 

 badly understood, and it is really the most important 

 branch of the art and science of tree culture. Trees 

 are very generally left to themselves, as reg-ards pru- 

 ning, during the summer, and when the winter or 

 spring pruning comes, immense quantities of surplus 

 wood has to be cut away, and this cutting promotes 

 a continued growth of wood and retards the produc- 

 tion of fruit. Without a judicious swmmer pruning, 

 we must say we would greatly prefer to have trees 

 left entirely to themselves during the whole season. 

 It would not only be a great saving of labor, but more 

 favorable to the health, longevity, fruitfulness and 

 beauty of the tree. In 1848, when we visited the 

 Chiswick gardens, where we expected to find the 

 master-pieces of English fruit tree culture, we saw 

 trees framed and trained into various forms, but in 

 nearly every case they were masses of young shoots 

 of the previous season's growth, and the pruning that 

 we then saw going on, was nothing but an indis- 

 criminate shearing or shortening of this superfluous 

 and unfruitful growth. When we crossed the chan- 

 nel and looked into the " Jardin des Plants," which 

 is the " Chiswick" of Paris, or rather France, we 

 found trees there in a very different condition. In 

 all the forms in which they were conducted, we found 

 them covered with fruit buds and fruit branches. 

 Every shoot of the previous season's growth, not 

 really required to make up the form of the tree, was 

 pruned or pinched during the growing season, so that 

 they were converted into fruitfulness instead of hav- 

 ing to be cut away at the winter pruning to make 

 room for another crop of barren shoots to be in their 

 turn cut away. The Frenchman's winter pruning 

 is almost a mechanical matter, a shortening of each 

 shoot, in proportion to its position and strength, with 

 a view to produce the form aimed at ; and this is all 

 it ought to be. The present is a good time to call 

 attention to this matter, and for the sake of making 

 ourselves understood, we subjoin the figure of a side 

 branch of a pear tree (Fig. 1,) which was shortened 

 at the winter or spring pruning, so that every eye 

 left produced a shoot. — 

 We see that below the 

 leader two shoots, a, a, are 

 produced. Now instead of 

 allowing these two shoots 

 to acquire their natural de- 

 velopment, as they are not 

 needed in tiie frame work 

 of the tree, we pinch off 

 the growing points at three fi^./- 

 or four buds from their 

 base, say at the cross lines, b, b. This stopping con- 

 centrates the sap in these shoots and changes them 

 into fruit branches. The pinching may be performed 

 at any time when the shoots have acquired sufficient 

 length, but when pinched early, say in the latter end 

 of May, or in June, the buds frequently break and 

 grow strongly again ; in such a case the pinching 

 must be repeated when they have grown three or four 

 inches, or made two or three joints of new wood, or 

 if they are allowed to grow until the beginning- of 

 August and the ends of the shoots then broken, as at 



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