49 



TREES, 



THE APRICOT. 



It will be understood from the general preliminaries 

 respecting the forming of trees from the year old graftling, 

 that the balance of experience at the Cape is in favonr of 

 low dwarf trees, because of their occupying less space, 

 coming into bearing sooner, and being far less exposed to 

 injury from high winds and the accidents of harvesting. 

 The tendency to push the standard pattern with tall axial 

 growth has been a fashion of late, just as a few years ago r 

 men coming out here with a European experience only, 

 condemned our Cape habit of pruning vines in the gobelet 

 dwarf style, and would fain have us set up poles and 

 trellises. We venture to say that the dwarf orchard tree- 

 will remain in vogue after most of the experimental stand- 

 ards have bsen cut back and regrafted. 



The apricot pushes so vigorously and fast that special 

 foresight is required to prevent.it from growing beyond its 

 strength and courting its own destruction by too liberal 

 spreading of branches. It is advisable to take all trees as 

 graftlings of a year old from the nursery, if you understand 

 their management ; but this precaution is specially neces- 

 sary with the apricot. Let the shoots you encourage for 

 main branches be alternately set, step-wise, on the 12-15 

 inch main axis left after planting, and as far as possible 

 balancing each other all round the tree. It is bad policy 

 to have three or four branches springing from what is prac- 

 tically the apex of the stem, like a Y with many arms. 

 One may easily secure this alternating outspring by rubbing 

 out a bud here and there and letting the intermediate ones 

 develope themselves. Precisely the same precaution has 

 to be taken in the development of shoots arising after 



