258 Management of the finer Sorts of French Pears. 



The Horizontal is certainly the best mode of training a 

 pear tree, as by this means the sap is more equally distributed 

 than it can be in any other way. There are, however, two 

 objections to this plan. The first is the length of time the 

 tree requires to fill the wall ; by the present mode of pruning 

 only one pair of branches can be annually produced in a hand- 

 some manner. Some gardeners talk of obtaining three pair 

 each summer, simply by leaving the leading shoot three feet, 

 or for small sorts of pear twenty-seven inches long ; and they 

 add, if some of the eyes remain dormant where branches are 

 wanted (and most assuredly they will), you are to cut notches 

 just above them, and they will not fail to produce shoots in 

 the following summer. This will certainly very often succeed, 

 though not always ; but supposing it should do so, the result 

 must be a very unsightly tree : indeed, should all the eyes 

 break naturally where branches are wanted, the tree would 

 never be handsome, because the eyes which are to produce 

 the upper pair of branches will always start the strongest, and 

 the lower ones, if they break at all, will produce weak shoots, 

 and as they will each year grow in proportion to the first, the 

 consequence must be a very irregular and ugly tree. 



The other objection is the small quantity of fruit produced. 

 As soon as the branches have reached to any considerable dis- 

 tance, say for instance fifteen feet on each side, they seldom 

 produce blossoms nearer the stem than half that distance, 

 and often not more than one third; in other words, the 

 tree seldom produces more than half or one third of a crop, 

 even if all the shoots except the leader of each branch are 

 pinched off within an inch or two as they appear, and as far 

 as practicable entirely cut out in the winter pruning, and this 

 is certainly the best way of treating a pear tree ; but if the 

 superfluous shoots are suffered to grow in the summer, and 

 are cut down to two or three eyes in the winter, producing 

 after a few seasons tufts of wood resembling willow stools, 

 they will not usually produce one fourth of a crop. The plan 

 of cutting out every other branch from a full grown tree 

 within a few inches of the trunk, and from the remaining part 

 of each branch so cut off, training in a strong shoot which in 

 a few years is to occupy the place of the lost branch, nailing 

 in young wood between the remaining horizontal branches 

 which is to be cleared away, as the shoot from the amputated 

 branch advances, is a great improvement, and for a short time 

 will be found very advantageous ; but as the tree advances to 

 its former shape, the superiority over the usual way of train- 

 ing a horizontal tree becomes less and less, the small branches 



