V,.] 



TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



175 



ten feet long, furnished with spurs from one end to the other. 

 When your room will suffer you to carry the limb no further, you 

 cut off the point. Let any one judge, then, what a saving of 

 room here is ; how much sun and air, and how regularly admitted, 

 compared with what is to be expected from the half standard oi 

 any other form. How are you to prune in this careful and yet 

 easy manner a tree of irregular shape ? My real opinion is that 

 an acre of ground well stocked with espaliers, the rows at ten 

 feet apart, and the plants at twenty feet apart in the row, would 

 produce, on an average of years, three times the weight of fruit to 

 be obtained from trees in any other form : besides which, the 

 ground between the rows might, a third part of it at least, pro- 

 duce cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, crops of any sort that did 

 not mount too high. The great fault in orchards is a want of 

 pruning ; and, indeed, such an operation on standard trees is next 

 to impossible. People pretend to object to the formality of the 

 espalier. Just as if formality were an objection in a kitchen- 

 garden where all is straight lines, and must be straight lines. 

 The little border between the espalier trees and the walk should 

 not be crowded with plants of any kind, and should have no plants 

 at all that grow to more than six or seven inches high. On the 

 other side of the espaliers nothing should grow within about four 

 feet ; but how small, still, is the space of ground which even a 

 large espalier would occupy ! Very little more than half a rod y 

 while you can have no tree in any other shape that will not occupy 

 and render useless five times the quantity of ground to produce 

 the same quantity of fruit ; and if I were to say ten times I 

 should be much nearer the mark. Then, there is the inconve- 

 nience of fruit-trees in all the other forms. They must stand at 

 a considerable distance from the walk, or they extend their 

 branches over it. It is a circle of ground that they occupy or 

 shade ; and the plat in which they stand can only be partially 

 cultivated for other things. If they mount above the reach of the 

 hand, to get at the fruit is a business of great trouble ; and, after 

 all, there can be no regular and true pruning ; no minute inspec- 

 tion : no picking off of caterpillars with exactness : no detection 

 and destruction of other insects ; and, in the case of cherries, 

 what a difficult business it must always be effectually to protect 

 the fruit against birds on any other tree except wall or espalier ! 

 I have seen the thing attempted some hundreds of times, and 



