VI. TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



other. When your room will suffer you to carry the 

 limb no further, you cut off the point. Let any one 

 judge, then, what a saving of room here is ; how much 

 sun and air, and how regularly admitted, compared with 

 what is to be expected from the half-standard or any 

 other form. How are you to prune in this careful and 

 yet easy manner a tree of irregular shape ? My real 

 opinion is, that, an acre of ground well stocked with 

 espaliers, the rows at ten feet apart, and the plants at 

 twenty-feet apart in the row, would produce, on an 

 average of years, three times the weight of fruit to be 

 obtained from trees in any other form j besides which, 

 the ground between the rows might, a third part of it, at 

 least, produce cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, crops of 

 any sort that did not mount too high. The great fault in 

 orchards is, a want of pruning j and, indeed, such an 

 operation on standard trees is next to impossible. People 

 pretentj to object to the formality of the espalier. Just as 

 if formality were an objection in a kitchen-garden where 

 all is straight lines, and must be straight lines ! The 

 little border between the espalier trees and the walk 

 should not be crowded with plants of any kind, and 

 should have no plants at all that grow to more than six 

 or seven inches high. On the other side of the espaliers 

 nothing should grow within about four feet j but, how 

 small, still, is the space of ground which even a large 

 espalier would occupy ! Very little more than half a rod, 

 while you can have no tree in any other shape that will 

 not occupy and render useless five times the quantity of 

 ground to produce the same quantity of fruit ; and, if 

 I were to say ten times, I should be much nearer the 

 mark. Then, there is the inconvenience of fruit-trees in 



