FRUIT TREES. Chap. II. 35 



or from a shoot of the graft, in either case it must be left in the nursery long enough to 

 gain the required strength. Trees that are to be planted around vineyards & estates, in 

 open orchards, & in places frequented by cattle must be left to get even stronger, so that 

 in a few years they will be in a secure condition. 



Some gardeners believe that it's preferable to transplant weaker trees, because the 

 less time that they stay in a nursery, the less accustomed they'll be to those conditions, the 

 less their roots will acquire size and strength there, and their bark won't be as hard. As a 

 result, they'll be less sensitive to a change in location, the damage to their roots won't be 

 as great, the they'll have less trouble taking root again, and finally their success will be 

 less faulty & incomplete. This practice sometimes succeeds, particularly when the trees 

 are taken from nurseries very close to the area where they're to be planted, and they're 

 lifted with great care & planted in the ground again as soon as possible so that the roots & 

 the root system don't undergo any change. I know of a grove of over a hundred pear trees 

 that were lifted from the nursery, possessing root origins barely seven to eight lignes [see 

 translator's note, p. 0053] in diameter, transported more than six leagues [Translator's 

 note: about fifteen miles] away, replanted three days after lifting, and that are succeeding 

 very well in an area where stronger trees have failed. But I doubt that the small number of 

 such examples should dictate against the usual practice of only planting trees of the sizes 

 indicated above; I think of those transplanted when very small as though they were 

 infants weaned too early that run a high risk of failing to thrive. 



I've said that peach trees should be lifted from the nursery a year after grafting, 

 regardless of the strength or weakness of the stocks on which they're grafted, because 

 among all of the fruit trees, the peach tree is the one whose shoots take with greatest 

 difficulty 



