494 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



With regard to the value of summer pinching, one has only to walk 

 into tho young quarters of a fruit-tree nursery and see three-year apples 

 which have been pinched for cordons carrying full crops of fruit, whilst 

 the bushes amongst which they are standing, and under precisely similar 

 conditions otherwise, have only odd fruits here and there. At the last 

 R.H.S. meeting Messrs. Veitch showed some two-year-old cordon apples 

 with ten large fruit on each : they could not carry more because there 

 was no space to stick them on. Again, how frequently one goes into 

 gardens where the wall trees run wild, with summer growths from 

 one to two feet long smothering the trees, and fruit conspicuous by 

 its absence, or only to be found at the extreme end of the extension- 

 shoots. This is often because the head gardener delights more in glass 

 than in hardy fruits, but more often because in these days large gardens 

 are terribly under- staffed and there is no one to do the work at the proper 

 time. In these cases I always say, as soon as the rush of early summer 

 work — bedding and what not — is over, run round the walls and espaliers 

 and break the side shoots back to six or eight inches, leaving the broken 

 portion hanging on. This broken part will absorb a small amount of sap, 

 and so prevent the lower buds from breaking into growth ; but at the same 

 time there will be a sufficient check to throw the sap into these lower 

 buds and plump them up ready for forming fruit buds the following 

 season. If the owner of the trees should object to the untidy appearance 

 of hundreds of broken shoots hanging on the trees, the obvious remedy 

 is to provide labour to do the pinching earlier. 



I fear I have failed to answer many of the questions put to me, but 

 it will, I think, be clear that young trees, especially those growing in rich 

 soil and upon free stocks, will need more attention in the way of summer 

 pinching than those which are older and less vigorous or worked upon 

 dwarfing stocks or growing in less fertile soil. 



In conclusion, I may say that pinching may be too severe, as well as 

 pruning : healthy trees must have some outlet for the sap ; the extension- 

 shoots will not take all the roots send up, and if one will pinch or prune 

 too closely, the remaining buds must make wood growth instead of bloom. 

 I was once asked to see the trees of an amateur who said he could obtain 

 no fruit, and after looking round his walls and espaliers I told him I had 

 never seen trees better pruned. He thought I was joking, and said that 

 was only his first pruning to allow the wood to ripen off, and that he 

 intended to go over them again and shorten every side growth to two 

 buds, under which treatment only complete exhaustion of the trees would 

 produce fruit buds. 



Too close pinching or pruning, especially the latter, is the great cause 

 of our gardens being fruitless ; and the next great fault is allowing 

 bunches of spars to remain on older trees. After fruit spurs are fully 

 developed they should be pruned closely ; two or three bloom buds on 

 a side shoot, each bud capable of producing a bunch of flowers and leaves, 

 should suffice ; but many old trees will be found with a dozen or more 

 fruit buds on a side growth, the result being that they smother one 

 another out of existence. 



Mr. W. Seabrook, of Springfield, Chelmsford, said that he had 

 learned to grow good fruit by making mistakes and correcting them. 



