136 THE MINIATUEE PETJIT &AEDEN 



HOW TO PRBPAEE A. PEACH TREE 

 BORDER IN LIGHT SOILS 



In our southern counties, where Ught sandy soils 

 abound, the difficulty of making peach and nectarine 

 trees trained to walls flourish is well known ; in spring 

 they are liable to the curl and the attacks of aphides, 

 in summer they are infested with the red spider, so 

 that the trees are weakened, and rarely give good 

 fruit; they seem, indeed, to detest light soils. The 

 following method of preparing borders for them in such 

 soils may be well known, but I have not seen it de- 

 scribed by any gardening author. The idea has come 

 to me from observing peach trees traiued to walls 

 refuse to do well in the light sandy soil forming a part 

 of my nursery, except near paths, and to grow and do 

 well for years in the stiff tenacious loam forming 

 another part. My bearing trees in pots, for which I 

 use tenacious loam and dung, rammed down with a 

 wooden pestle, also bear and flourish almost beyond 

 belief; and so I am induced to recommend that in 

 light soils the peach tree border should be made as 

 follows : — To a wall of moderate height, say nine or 

 ten feet, a border six feet wide, and to a wall twelve 

 feet high, one eight feet wide should be marked out. 

 If the soil be poor and exhausted by cropping, or if 

 it be an old garden, a dressing of rotten dung^ and 



' If the border be new or rich with manure, a dressing of the 

 loam or clay only, four inches in thickness, will be suiHoient. 



