FRUIT TREES. Chap. I. 9 



During the summer care must be taken to pinch off all of the shoots that come out of the 

 plant, leaving only one, or at most two, that will strengthen and be suitable for accepting 

 a bud graft in August of the same year, or of the following year which is more usual. 



Since plum trees with thinner bark are preferred, suckers are taken from the 

 cherry plum, large damson, or absent these, from the small black damson, & especially 

 from the bullacc. Nursery gardeners claim that violette and chevreuse peach tree grafts 

 succeed well only on the bullace. Other kinds of peach trees adapt to the damson. 



However, the large number of shoots & suckers put out by plum and cherry trees, 

 especially by those that themselves have been raised from suckers, can damage trees 

 grafted upon them & are very troublesome for growers. It would be far better to raise 

 these trees from pits, especially if they're sown in their permanent locations. The taproot 

 is not cut off at all; (it must be left intact on all trees that are not to be transplanted) & the 

 roots will be much less likely to spread out. At minimum, it would be advantageous to set 

 grafts very close to the roots on stocks raised from suckers. When the graft has produced 

 a shoot about a foot long, it's earthed up, and left to take root. Then the tree is lifted, the 

 entire stock is cut off, & the graft is re-planted with its own roots. All of the suckers 

 coming out will thus become independent trees that will not need to be grafted. 



The stumps of pear & apple trees in the wild and old pear & apple trees in 

 orchards produce a lot of suckers & shoots from which very good stocks can be made, 

 treating them the same way as those of plum and cherry trees. 



