SUMMER PRUNING AND TRAINING. 11 



trees. As I have already observed, now is the time to 

 control the tree, according to its constitution. If the 

 tree is weak, disbud more freely ; if the tree is too 

 luxuriant, lay in more wood. 



Now is the time also to make rosy and handsome 

 fruit or pale fruit. If the fruit is exposed to the 

 sun from the first, i.e. from the time it is of the 

 size of a small walnut, through the whole growing 

 season until it is ripe, handsome and fine-flavoured 

 Peaches will be the result ; but if it is shaded by the 

 foliage of the tree it will be as fine, but it will be of a 

 pale colour. If shaded by the leaves till half grown or 

 nearly full grown, and then exposed to the sun, the 

 Peaches and Nectarines will get scorched on the side 

 exposed, and be spoilt in appearance. 



The fruit must be thinned, allowing three or four to 

 remain to a square foot, according to the strength of 

 the tree. It should be thinned as soon as it gets to the 

 size of a filbert ; and if the ground of the border on 

 which the peaches are growing is of a stony and free 

 nature, and the drainage of a very loose kind, I advise 

 that one or two thorough good soakings with liquid 

 manure be given them as soon as the fruit has attained 

 to the size of a walnut, especially if the ground is poor 

 and the trees are weak. It will be necessary to go 

 over the trees twice at the least during the summer, to 

 regulate the growth, and to nail in neatly all the good 

 young wood. 



In most young Peach and Nectarine trees, and others 

 that are cut back, some very gross shoots will be made 

 with wood buds a long distance from each other. These 

 rank-growing shoots can be observed before they are 

 half developed. As soon as they are from six to nine 

 inches long, stop them by nipping off the top. The 

 consequence will be a shoot of a weaker nature, pro- 

 duced from each bud below ; and should these lateral 

 shoots indicate too rank a growth, when they have 

 made six inches of growth stop each of them again ; 

 by this means moderate fruit-bearing wood will result. 

 Now, I think I have said (as briefly, and yet as much 



