ON THE MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT-TREES IN POTS. 255 



endeavoured to ascertain within how short a period, in the ordinary 

 temperature of my pine-stove, plants of the Chasselas and Verdelho 

 vine could be made to yield more mature fruit. 



The subjects of this experiment had produced a crop of fruit previ- 

 ously to midsummer 1820, and in the following month of July they had 

 been taken from the stove, after having been for some time sparingly 

 supplied with water, and placed under a north wall ; in which situation 

 they remained nearly torpid till autumn, when they were pruned. Early 

 in the winter, I observed in them strong symptoms of a disposition 

 to vegetate, though they remained in the cold and shaded situation 

 in which they were first placed, when removed from the stove; and 

 on the 12th of January, I found the buds so much swollen, that I feared 

 the exposure to frost would prove fatal to them, and the pots were con- 

 sequently removed to the stove. 



In this, the sudden increase of temperature occasioned every visible 

 bud to unfold itself within a very few days ; and on the 17th of the 

 following month, being thirty-six days after the pots were brought into 

 the stove, the berries of some bunches of the Verdelho grape were 

 so far grown, that I could have thinned them with advantage. In 

 the end of March, the Chasselas grapes became soft and transparent, 

 and in the middle of April some bunches were as mature, and much 

 more yellow, than those of the same kind usually are when first brought 

 to the London market in the spring ; though the weather had been, 

 during the early part of the spring, dark and cloudy, and consequently 

 unfavourable. The wood of these vines appeared nearly mature in the 

 end of the last month (April) ; and by removing them from the stove 

 for a short time to a cold and shaded situation, and subsequently 

 replacing them in the stove, I do not doubt the practicability of obtain- 

 ing another crop from them within the present year. 



A pot which contains a quantity of mould equal to a cube of fourteen 

 inches has been found large enough for a vine whose foliage occupied a 

 space of twenty square feet; water holding manure in solution being 

 abundantly given : and I have seen grapes acquire a larger size, and 

 other fruits a higher flavour, under such management than under any 

 other. 



The supposed necessity of frequently removing fruit-trees which grow 

 in pots, to other pots of larger dimensions, appears to present a good 

 deal of inconvenience ; but I have readily obviated this necessity by 

 means which I can confidently recommend to the attention of gardeners. 

 When the plant or fruit-tree is first placed in the pot in which it is long 



