208 



THE PEACH AND NECTABINB. 



would be bad. The tops of long shoots are often most imperfectly 

 ripened in our climate. This is one natural mode of pruning such trees. 

 XTnripeued wood becomes an easy prey to the first frosts. These prune 

 or bite back the gross shoots to sounder buds, and so far render an 

 important service to the tree, and ensure finer wood for the next season ; 

 but it is seldom the frost carries the beheading far enough, and if it does 

 it does its work in m clumsy manner, and leaves ugly scars behind it, 

 resulting in gums, cankers, gangrene, &o. The clean cut of the knife at 

 once removes all immature wood, and leaves a small wound, which is 

 quickly healed over. 

 And, besides, the length of the wood may be nicely adjusted to suit the 

 strength of the tree, the demands for bearing 

 wood, the number of fruit wanted on each 

 shoot, and other circumstances. The weaker 

 the trees, the shorter should the bearing 

 shoots be left; the stronger, the longer. 

 The latter statement, however, must be 

 modified by another condition, the necessity 

 of forcing each piece of bearing wood of the 

 one season to produce near its base a suc- 

 cession shoot to fruit the next year. Had 

 Fig. 43, for instance, been left too long, the 

 young shoots shown at its base would have 

 sprung from half-way or more up the shoots, 

 and thus left all the bottom unfurnished the 

 next year. 



Practically, the young wood may vary 

 in length from Gin. to a foot or more ; 

 9in. would prove a safe average in old 

 trees ; for young ones growing vigorously 18in. might not prove 

 excessive. It is, always, however, safer to out the shoots back too 

 much than to leave them too long, for hard cutting reduces the number 

 of fruit, favours the vigour of the tree, and also ensures a plentiful 

 succession of young wood — ^the only sure and certain foundation of 

 permanent health and perpetual fertility. 



By pruning back Fig. 42, for example, at the disconnecting space shown, 

 the stem pushes a shoot at its base, which is allowed to grow throughout 

 the summer, to succeed the fruit shoot on Fig. 43. At the winter pruning 

 that fruiting shoot is removed at the base, leaving the young shoot which 

 during the summer has formed fruit buds to succeed the one removed. 

 Fig. 44 shows a double supply of succession shoots, one or both of which 

 may be retained after the removal of the last year's fruiting branch. Of 



Fis. a. 



