ON THE CULT EKE OF THE FIG. 
89 
plants are now furnished with well ripened wood, and are fully fur¬ 
nished with fruit buds. I think it right, however, to observe that 
my trees are growing in a separate small, well-sheltered wall 
garden. 
I should not class our district as a warm one. The Myrtle re¬ 
quires protection, and Peach and Nectarine cultivation out of doors 
has long been abandoned :'as hopeless. Our soil is a strong red 
wheat loam, of good general qualities, resting on the inferior oolite 
formation. In many parts our subsoil is a strong clay, my 
trees, however, stand over the shell-hearing limestone. 
I am aware that the Fig has been thus grown with "much suc¬ 
cess further north, but, unless I am mistaken, it has been in mari¬ 
time climates, where plants of a much tenderer constitution have 
been found to flourish also. In my own case I attribute my results 
to the steady and equable growth made by the plants, and the more 
complete exposure to climatic influences during the growing 
season. We are here, as I observed before, in the centre of Eng¬ 
land, and I should imagine that a fortiori in the London district 
the experiment of a small Fig orchard would be well worth the 
trial. 
Our wall-trained Figs bear plentifully, and ripen well most 
seasons, but a strong frost in May has sometimes destroyed greater 
part of the young pushing fruits, while the less developed buds 
upon the standards have escaped uninjured. 
We train closely on the walls, and keep the wood very thin, 
but allow the year’s growth to ramble untrained till towards the 
end of the season. Greater part of the shoots are stopped before 
midsummer, and the secondary resulting shoots have time to mature 
themselves sufficiently to bear fruit in the succeeding year. We 
also use Dr. Hogg’s method of pinching out terminal buds before the 
leaves push, particularly when we desire to secure the crop from 
long bare shoots previous to t cutting them entirely back at 
the winter pruning. I have tried, too, Mr. Gilbert’s method of 
letting the trees occasionally ramble at will for more than one 
season, so as to take a crop from untrained wood. This plan, 
which is a founded upon the old-fashioned, but very general, idea, 
that a Fig-tree should never be pruned at all, has the sanction of 
the above-mentioned very competent judge. The prune-not-at-all 
system is much in use in Devon and Dorset. I do not approve of 
it in its entirety, preferring upon the whole a stricter method of 
training. 
