32 PRUNING. 



with a new layer of bark. Many compositions have been in 

 fashion, abroad, for this purpose, which, under our summer sun 

 and wintry frosts, are nearly worthless, as they generally crack 

 and fall off in a single year. The following is a cheap and 

 admirable application, which we recommend to all cultivators 

 of fruit trees. 



Composition for wounds made in pruning. Take a quart of 

 alcohol and dissolve in it as much gum shellac as will make a 

 liquid of the consistence of paint Apply this to the wound 

 with a common painter's brush ; always paring the wound 

 smoothly first with the knife. The liquid becomes perfectly hard, 

 adheres closely, excludes the air perfectly, and is affected by no 

 changes of weather ; while at the same time its thinness offers 

 no resistance to the lip of new bark that gradually closes over 

 the wound. If the composition is kept in a well corked bottle, 

 sufficiently wide mouthed to admit the brush, it will always be 

 ready for use and suited to the want of the moment. 



2. Pruning to induce fruitfulness. 



When a young fruit tree is too luxuriant, employing all its 

 energies in making vigorous shoots, but forming few or no blos- 

 som buds, and producing no fruit, we have it in our power by 

 different modes of pruning to lessen this over-luxuriance, and 

 force it to expend its energies in fruit-bearing. The most direct 

 and successful mode of doing this is by pruning the roots, a pro- 

 ceeding recently brought into very successful^ practice by Euro- 

 pean gardeners. 



Root pruning has the effect of at once cutting off a consider- 

 able supply of the nourishment formerly afforded by the roots of 

 a tree. The leaves, losing part of their usual food, are neither 

 able to grow as rapidly as before, nor to use all the nutritious 

 matter already in the branches ; the branches therefore become 

 more stunted in their growth, the organizable matter accumu- 

 lates, and fruit buds are directly formed. The energies of the 

 tree are no longer entirely carried off in growth, and the return- 

 ing sap is employed in producing fruit buds for the next year. 



Root pruning should be performed in autumn or winter, and 

 it usually consists in laying bare the roots and cutting off 

 smoothly at a distance of a few feet from the trunk, (in propor- 

 tion to the size of the tree) the principal roots. Mr. Rivers, an 

 English nurseryman of celebrity, who has practised this mode 

 with great success, digs a trench early in November, eighteen 

 inches deep, round his trees to be root pruned, cutting off the 

 roots with a sharp spade. By following this practice every 

 year, he not only throws his trees into early bearing, but forces 

 Apples, Pears, and the like, grafted on their own roots, to be- 

 come prolific dwarfs, growing only six feet apart, trained in a 



