THE PEACH AND NECTARINE. 



589 



stock they grow very vigorously at first, but do not long continue to thrive. 

 For general purposes the plum stock is by far the best, as from its abundance 

 of roots it transplants readily ; while the roots of the almond and peach, being 

 few and very remote, they transplant with difficulty. The French gardeners 

 use the almond stock for light chalky or sandy soils, and the plum stock for 

 clayey or loamy soils. When the plants are not removed the first 3'ear to 

 where they are finall}'' to remain, they are cut down in the nursery to three 

 or four eyes, and the shoots produced trained in the fan manner, already 

 described at length (801). This may either be done in the open garden 

 against a row of stakes, or the plants may be removed to a wall, which is the 

 best mode for ripening the wood. To ensure this result the plants should 

 in no case be placed in very rich moist soil. An expeditious mode of 

 covering a wall with peach or nectarine trees, where the subsoil is dry, or 

 the bottom of the border paved, or rendered impervious to the roots of the 

 trees by other means, is thus described by a gardener who practised it in 

 Essex. Kernels of peaches, nectarines, or apricots, are planted underthe 

 walls on the spots where the trees are finally to remain, in January ; and 

 the plants raised are either budded with the desired sorts in the August of 

 the same year, or grafted in the splice manner already described (652) in 

 the following March. When budding is employed, the point of the shoot 

 produced by the bud is pinched off after it has grown six inches or eight 

 inches in length, and only five buds are allowed to push ; the fiA'^e shoots 

 produced by these buds are shortened with the finger and thumb to five 

 inches or six inches in length, and these being disbudded, so as to admit of 

 only two shoots from each, a complete fan-shaped tree is produced in one 

 season. These trees bear the third year, and those which are grafted bear 

 the second. (G. M.^ vol. ii., p. 149.) A wall might be covered with equal 

 expedition by stopping the shoots of seedlings in the same manner as the 

 shoot produced by a bud ; but in this case there is the risk of some, or 

 perhaps most, of the sorts, not proving so good as some of the old established 

 kinds. The quickest mode of proving the quality of peaches, or of the fruit 

 of other trees raised from seed, is to take a bud from them, and insert it near 

 the extremity of a lateral branch of a tree of the same species (045-2), 

 Budded on the Moor-park apricot, the flavour of the peach is said to be 

 greatly improved ; on the mirabelle or myrobalan plum, the tree is some- 

 what dwarfed (120.'3). 



1298. Soil^ situation^ S^c. — A fresh loamy soil on a dry bottom answers 

 best, and care should be taken not to enrich the soil so much by manure as 

 to occasion the production of longer shoots than can be properly ripened. In 

 few situations should the peach border be more than eighteen inches or two 

 feet in depth, and it need not be more than ten feet or twelve feet in width, 

 even when the walls are fifteen feet in height. (See 886.) The peach in 

 Britain is almost always planted against a south wall, but in some sheltered 

 situations it will succeed on a south-east or south-west aspect. Against a 

 south-west wall the blossoms are more liable to be injured by the heavy 

 rains from that quarter, and the shoots are apt to grow stronger, in which 

 case they ought to be laid in more horizontally than in the case of a wall 

 facing the south. Mr. Glendinning recommends all peach walls to be covered 

 with horizontal copper wires, extended longitudinally at six inches or seven 

 inches' distance, and fastened to cast-iron eyes driven into the wall. The 

 advantage is, that a man can tie two trees to the wires with bast ligaments, 



