592 



THE PEACH AND NECTARINE. 



bud, a shoot is as necessary for it as if there had been two. In either case 

 the shoot may be shortened to three or four leaves after the fruit is stoned, 

 which will be quite sufficient to maintain a circulation of the sap in connec- 

 tion with the fruit. 



1302. In summer-pruning the peach in cold, late situations, it is found 

 that stopping the shoots, when they are an inch or two in length, facilitates 

 the production of blossom-buds and the ripening of the wood. The French 

 method of disbudding in spring and summer, and pinching off with the finger 

 and thumb in the latter season, instead of leaving the young shoots to 

 become woody, and afterwards using the knife, and also their mode of 

 pinching off the blossom-buds, instead of allowing more blossoms than are 

 wanted to set their fruit, and afterwards thinning it out, and of taking out 

 all the leaf-buds not wanted as soon as they have swelled a little, so as to 

 have very few shoots to remove, well deserves to be imitated by the British 

 gardener. A French gardener seldom uses his knife to a peach-tree in the 

 summer season ; and, indeed, if he were to allow as much of the strength of 

 the tree to run to waste in fruits to be thinned out, and shoots to be cut away 

 in winter, his bofders, which are narrow, shallow, and poor compared with 

 those in British gardens, would be unable to support the tree. 



1303. Thinning the fruit must be attended to when the blossoms have 

 not been thinned, or not thinned sufficiently : it should commence when the 

 fruit are about the size of large peas, and be continued till the stoning season 

 is over. Healthy trees may be allowed to ripen four peaches to every 

 square foot. The smaller the number and the larger the size, the less will 

 the tree be exhausted in proportion to the weight of fruit produced ; for, as 

 we have already observed, a greater exhaustion is produced by the seed and 

 stone than by their fleshy envelope. Ten dozen of peaches, weighing 12 lbs., 

 will exhaust the tree nearly twice as much as five dozen amounting to the 

 same weight. 



1304. Treatment of the peach border. — The peach, as well as most other 

 wall-fruit trees, Mr. Errington, Mr. Glendinning, and other scientific and 

 experienced gardeners, observe, is most commonly planted in borders far too 

 deep and too rich. If a good loamy soil from the surface of an old pasture- 

 ground can be procured, and if the border is not cropped, it will require no 

 manure for several years. If the soil is either poor at first, or becomes poor, 

 bone manure may be applied, as decomposing slowly ; or if the trees become 

 weak, the surface may be annually mulched with stable dung. All fruit- 

 tree borders, Mr. Glendinning observes, should be occasionally forked up ; 

 but no spade should ever be used for this purpose, not even among goose- 

 berry bushes ; for more injury is done by it than most people are aware of. 

 No vegetables should ever be cultivated in fruit-tree borders, more especially 

 none that require manure, Mr. Callow stirs his peach borders with the 

 fork frequently during the summer months ; digs them slightly with the 

 spade in winter, laying the soil up in ridges ; and he never sows or plants 

 vegetables on peach borders, except a few lettuce or endive near the walk. 

 Throughout the summer the peach border will require occasional watering, 

 more especially when the fruit is approaching to maturity; but water ought 

 to be withheld when it is stoning and when it is ripening ; as in the former 

 case it is found to cause the fruit to drop. 



1305. Over luxuriant peach trees may be reduced by disleafing, root-pruning 

 (776), or, what is perhaps the best mode, especially if the tree has been too 



