552 Protecting and Preserving of Fruit Trees. 



vines with one another, and producing fruit to the satisfaction 

 and admiration of my employer and other competent judges ; 

 viz., the Sweet Ispahan, Salonica, Cassabar, Scarlet rock, and 

 Windsor prize. 



Art. VIII. On Protecting and Preserving Fruit Trees. By Mr. James 

 Eaton, Gardener to the Earl of Ilchester, at Melbury, Dorset- 

 shire. 



In 1808, I finished making a new kitchen-garden, for the Earl 

 of Ilchester, at Melbury. The borders were all of fresh maiden 

 loam, 3 ft. deep and 12 ft. wide, well drained and paved at the 

 bottom, and in them I thought peaches and nectarines could not 

 fail to do well ; but, to my great disappointment, they did only 

 middling for the first two or three years, then they became so 

 cankered and naked at the bottom, that I was obliged to take 

 them away. I planted most of the borders again with trees 

 brought from different soils : these did no better ; and in a few 

 years I was obliged to plant all my borders again. I changed 

 the soil, and tried every method I could think of, but with no 

 better success. I thought, at last, that possibly it was the cold 

 that checked the sap in the spring, and thus injured the trees ; and 

 I had all my peach and nectarine trees, from the first year they 

 were planted, covered every night, as soon as the buds began to 

 open, till the middle or end of May, with a mat. I found this 

 practice succeed perfectly, and when the trees got too big to be 

 covered with a mat, I stuck small boughs of evergreens, such as 

 Portugal laurel, &c, round their trunks ; and let them remain 

 till all danger from cold was over. When the trees became too 

 large to be covered with either a mat or branches of evergreens, 

 I sheltered the whole of the south walls, and part of the east 

 wall, with curtains made of thin but strong canvass, called here 

 Huiderlin canvass, which costs about ^d. per yard. These cur- 

 tains consist of four breadths of canvass sewed together, and they 

 reach nearly from the coping to about 18 in. from the ground. 

 I draw them sidewise, like bed curtains, which I consider much 

 better than employing lines and pulleys. I have wire rings sewed 

 on a piece of strong tape along the top, the bottom, and two 

 places between the top and bottom of each curtain, to keep it 

 from being too much strained by the wind. These rings run on 

 small iron rods like bed-curtain rods, fixed into studs made of 

 deal or fir, about 2| in. square, which are made movable, that 

 they may not be obliged to remain. To effect this out of doors 

 all winter, I have iron holdfasts driven into the wall near the top 

 and the bottom, to fix the studs into ; the top one stands 6 in. 

 from the wall, and the bottom one nine. There are holes in 



