PRUNING, ETC. 



279 



Pruning. The fruit being borne only on Tood 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, E, are 

 fruit buds, F, G, ff, leaf buds, /, double buds, 6', triple 

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

 on* 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. 



lik/v?, if that shoot were not pruned, all the fruit buds 

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

 buds ar 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 s;ip is retained in its lower parts, one half of the 

 fruit buds are removed, and the consequence is, that 

 large arid 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 of a low standard peach 

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



,..,., i a Q d 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. 



