356 



MANAGEMENT OF APPLE AND PEAR TREES* 



Improvement 

 in their ma- 

 nagement. 



Some trees in 

 the above state 



thinned out 

 greatly by- 

 pruning. 



Directions for pruning these, as well as all other fruit 

 trees, have already been published by various experienced 

 gardeners, nor is it my present intention to offer any instruc- 

 tions on this head; but necessity, which has been so justly 

 called the mother of invention, having impelled me to try a 

 method that I have not seen practised by any other person, 

 and which has proved uncommonly successful, a short detail 

 of it may perhaps be deemed not unworthy the attention of 

 the Horticultural Society. 



When first I came to Millfield, I found a number of ap- 

 ple and pear trees, not only planted too closely, but left 

 entirely to their natural manner of growing, and exceed- 

 ingly shaded by a row of high trees in the hedge, which se- 

 parates them from the pleasure ground. 



Other business to be done, of more importance, prevented 

 me from pruning the whole immediately; but a number 

 were selected the first season, and many of their largest 

 branches taken entirely out from the bottom, cutting the 

 wounds very clean. The remaining branches were also pro- 

 perly thinned, so as to leave room for the air and light to 

 play upon the smallest branches. 

 The-shoots from The following summer, the shoots pushed from those 



them very vi- p rune d trees, as might have been expected, were uncom- 

 gorous. * ° ' 



monly vigourous, such as the French call gourmands, often 



Bent down by from three to five feet long, or more. About the end of 

 June, or a little sooner and later, according to the growth 

 of the branches, I applied oval balls of grafting clay to- 

 wards their extremity, sufficiently heavy to incline them 

 downwards in a pendulous direction. The sap being thus 

 diverted from its natural mode of ascending and descending, 

 every bud almost became a blossom bud, and in several 

 trees this disposition to produce blossom buds was carried 

 down to the very lowest spurs on the stem and thicker 

 branches. 

 Advantages of I need not add, that this practice has since been closely 

 the practice. followed up ; for many advantages, exclusive of a more cer- 

 tain crop of fruit, attend it. 1st. Other small vegetables may 

 be successfully cultivated under the light shade of trees kept 

 so open, an object of importance in the villages near London, 

 where ground is so difficult to be got: 2dly, No expense of 



espalier, 



a weight near 

 the end 



