VI.] 



TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



169 



as 1 before observed, to come under the names of the different trees 

 respectively, I shall proceed to speak of the mode of managing 

 those fruit-trees which are not placed against a wall. There are 

 divers modes of training, the pyramid, the gohlet, the bushy the 

 half'Standardy the arching, and, which is the great method of 

 all, espalier, after which will come the instructions for the rearing of 

 standards for the orchard. I shall give my reasons for preferring 

 the old-fashioned espalier to every other species of training of trees 

 not against a wall, and also my reasons for wholly excluding all 

 standards from the garden. I think all the other methods, except 

 the espalier, of training fruit-trees (for a garden) very bad : I have 

 never seen them attended with success, to say nothing of the irre- 

 gularity of their appearance, and the various inconveniences which 

 attend them. Nevertheless, I will mention them here one by one^ 

 that the reader may, if he choose, make use of them. 



254. PYRAMID FORM.— The first year, prune the graft at 

 5 or 6 inches from the bottom, saving 3 or 4 eyes to form lateral 

 branches and to carry up the stem ; but these first lateral branches 

 are essential, for they will furnish the requisite abundance of wood 

 below, which, when the tree has obtained a certain height, cannot 

 be obtained, and yet which is absolutely necessary to the beauty 

 as well as utility of the pyramid. Sulfer no other shoots this year 

 than from the 3 or 4 buds mentioned above. Stop the upright 

 stem every year when it has shot to the length of 12 or 18 inches, 

 and this will force it to send out every year a set of lateral shoots, 

 and of these you make your election of 3 or 4 to save. At the 

 pruning time, shorten the lateral branches more or less, according 

 to the vigour of the tree and the just distribution of sap amongst 

 all the branches. If you wish to raise a branch, prune at an upper 

 bud ; and at a low er bud to loicer a branch. If you w'ish to cause 

 a branch to tend to the right or to the left, choose a bud situated on 

 the right or the left side to prune at. In either case, to prevent 

 the branch going straight, you have nothing to do but prune a 

 little way above the bud. Thus the training continues ; and, as 

 the lowermost branches are always a year older than the upper, 

 this gradation should be preserved in the length of the branches, 

 which of course must diminish by stages all the way up, from 

 the base to the summit. This sort of training conduces at once 

 to the fruitfulness and to the duration of the tree. 



255. THE GOBLET OR CUP FORM isvery little otherthan 



