68 



THE MINIATURE FRUIT GARDEN. 



stock, and are then excellently well adapted for small 

 gardens. I have, indeed, reason to think that a great 

 change may be brought about in suburban fruit cul- 

 ture by these bush trees. I have shown, in pp. 17 

 and 18, how bush pears on quince stocks may be cul- 

 tivated. Pears are, however, a luxury : apples and 

 plums are necessaries to the families of countless 

 thousands living near London. Apple bushes, always 

 very pretty and productive trees, may be planted 

 three feet apart, row from row, and three feet apart 

 in the rows. If two or three years old when planted, 

 thoy will begin to bear even the first season after 

 planting. They should be kept from the attacks of 

 the green aphis in summer by dressing the young 

 shoots with the quassia mixture, given in a note to p. 

 89, and from the woolly aphis by Gishurst compound 

 mentioned in page 66. The principal feature in this 

 culture is summer pinching, which must be regularly 

 attended to, from early in June till the end of August : 

 this is done by pinching or cutting off the end of 

 every shoot as soon as it has made five or six leaves, 

 leaving from three to four full-sized ones. Some 

 varieties of the apple have their leaves very thickly 

 placed on the shoots ; with them it is better not to 

 count the leaves, but to leave the shoots from three 

 and a half to four inches in length. If the soil be 

 rich, and the trees inclined to grow too vigorously, 

 they may be removed biennially, as recommended for 

 bush pears, by digging a circular trench one foot from 

 the stem of the tree, and then introducing the spade 

 under its roots, heaving it up so as to detach them all 

 from the soil, and then filling in the earth dug from 



