590 



THE PEACH AND NECTARINE. 



in the same time that he can nail one tree to tlie bricks. When nails and 

 shreds are used, he prefers the latter of a dark colour, and narrower than 

 are generally used, because they look neater, and they last long enough, as 

 they are never applied a second time. Where the peach is grown only for 

 tarts it may be tried as an espalier. Where there is a choice of plants from 

 a nursery, trees three or four years trained, if grafted on plum stocks, may be 

 chosen, and the trees, if carefully removed in October or November, will 

 bear a few fruit next year. " In planting never dig a pit, because, by the 

 sinking of the loose soil the tree will in two or three years be much too deep; 

 spread the roots carefully out on the surface of the border, and cover them 

 three inches with soil." This is Mr. Glendinning's mode with the peach, and 

 it would be an immense advantage to adopt it in the case of all fruit trees 

 and fruit shrubs whatever, which are planted on newly-trenched ground. 

 Where a wall to be covered with peaches is upwards of twelve feet high, 

 riders may be planted as before recommended (889), and these should always 

 be trees which have been several years trained, the object being to cover the 

 walls as soon as possible. Permanent dvrarf trees may be planted at fourteen 

 feet to twenty feet apart, according as the wall is twelve feet or fifteen feet 

 in height. (See 890.) 



1299. Mode of bearing, pruning, <^c.— The blossom-buds in all the differ- 

 ent varieties of peach, nectarine, and almond, are produced almost exclu- 

 sively on the wood of the preceding year ; and that wood seldom produces 

 blossom a second time. There are, however, occasional small spurs produced 

 on two-year-old wood, but these cannot be reckoned on. The great art in 

 pruning the peach, therefore, is to produce an annual crop of young wood 

 all over the tree, which can only be done by shortening back lateral shoots 

 on every part of it. In the course of the spring and summer, all the shoots 

 that are not wanted to bear the following year should be disbudded (771), 

 that is, entirely removed as soon as the buds begin to expand; and in the course 

 of the winter pruning following, all the shoots left ought to be shortened 

 according to their strength and situation, the weakest cut to one or two buds, 

 the less weak to one half or more of their length, and the strongest shortened 

 one-fourth or one-third of their length. According to the common mode of 

 fan-training (801), Callow's mode (803), and Hay ward's mode (804), these 

 shoots are left all over the tree, as equally as can be done by the eye, or as 

 the shoots produced admit of ; but, according to Seymour's mode of training 

 (802), they are left at regular and fixed distances, and the buds being all 

 removed between these fixed points, no laterals are produced anywhere else ; 

 so that the tree once fully formed on this system, nothing can be more 

 regular than its future treatment. Notwithstanding these advantages, 

 Seymour's system has not been adopted to such an extent as might have 

 been expected ; and the same remark is applicable to Mr. Callow's system, 

 which we agree, with Mr. Glendinning (see an excellent article on the cul- 

 ture of the peach on open walls in the G. M. for 1841), appears a great 

 improvement on the common fan mode of training. 



1300. Mr. Callows mode of training. — By the common fan manner of 

 training, Mr. Callow found that the lower branches soon became weak, 

 from having been laid in at a less angle than the others, which deprived them 

 of their due proportion of sap. While striving to obviate this difficulty, he 

 AY as struck with the form of the lower branches of some elms, which, though 

 they projected ever so far horizontally, still had their extremities always ' 



