36 TREATISE ON 



on wood several years old. And the almond tree, the stock upon which the peach tree is 

 usually grafted, with precautions taken to make it produce lateral roots, tolerates 

 transplantation less well than other trees. So if some peach trees have to be left in the 

 nursery for a second or a third year, or even longer, they must be pruned & the branches 

 arranged as though they were already permanently in place. When they're to be lifted, a 

 trench two spade widths wide & deeper than the lowest roots, must be dug at a distance 

 of twenty-five to thirty inches around each tree, or even further, depending on the age & 

 the strength of the tree. Uncover & free the roots little by little without damaging them. 

 Cut the largest ones as far away as possible from their origins. Bring the tree to its 

 intended destination as soon as it's been pulled up. Trim the ends of the roots and plant 

 the tree according to the instructions that we'll give below. Tamp the soil down with 

 water, groom the top, prune closely the branches to be preserved, and protect the tree 

 from drought during the spring & summer. With this care, the tree assuredly not only will 

 take root, but even will be able to bear some fruit in the very first year, despite having 

 spent six or seven years in the nursery. 



It's very useful to maintain a small preserve of fruit trees of all of the species that 

 are managed this way, to replace both the trees that fail in the first year of a new planting 

 as well as those that have died in older plantings. 



The nurserymen's usual practice is to re-graft peach tree grafts that remain from 

 the previous year, in other words to cut them back to four or five lignes [see translator's 

 note, p. 0053] from their insertion point. Ordinarily, several new shoots emerge from the 

 collar of the graft, and they save & prepare one or two of them. This practice is quite 

 convenient for keeping grafted peach trees in a nursery for several years, where a shoot 

 from the graft 



