166 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ February £6, 1885. 
on every hand, whereas winter pruning may he performed 
it any time between the fall of the leaf and the time when 
the buds again start into growth, without any special harm 
being done, with few exceptions, although the sooner the 
operation can be performed in the autumn the better. It 
is also a season when other work does not press so heavily, 
and no doubt this is a great inducement to many to neglect 
summer pruning entirely, but it cannot be reasonably used 
as an argument against summer pruning if the latter can 
be proved to be more conducive to health and fertility. 
Summer pruning undoubtedly requires throughout the 
early summer months unwearied and strict attention to 
minute details, otherwise it is not productive of good results. 
It is also essential that the operator should first make him¬ 
self thoroughly acquainted with the nature and condition of 
each tree, as well as to have a definite object in view before 
he attempts summer-pruning. He should, in fact, be able 
beforehand to see exactly the effect that will be produced 
by the operations he is about to perform, and regulate his 
method of treatment so as to suit the varying conditions of 
each tree. Like every other system of pruning it has been 
carried to excess by its most enthusiastic advocates; its 
more general adoption has also been somewhat retarded by 
the disrepute which has, in some instances, attended it by 
misapplication and the erroneous practice of novices. These 
instances are fortunately not sufficiently numerous nor of 
sufficient importance to prevent its progress, and that it will 
be generally adopted in future in the cultivation of the 
smaller forms of fruit trees and such as are trained on the 
walls, for all of which it is well suited, there cannot be a 
doubt. In the cultivation of stone fruits summer pinching 
and pruning is more especially advantageous, and were it 
solely adopted in their management the pruning knife might 
be altogether discarded ; gumming, canker, and similar ple¬ 
thoric diseases, too often engendered by inordinate winter 
pruning, would be greatly reduced, and the trees generally 
would be more healthy and fruitful. Apricots especially 
are so benefited by summer pruning, that in numerous 
instances I have seen half furnished, ill-shaped, miserable- 
looking trees completely renovated in a very short time by 
its adoption. 
It is sometimes erroneously supposed that summer prun¬ 
ing can only be practised with success when the roots are 
greatly restricted either by periodical root-pruning or by 
confining them to a limited border, also that free-growing 
exuberant trees are irreparably injured when subjected to 
this method of treatment. This is doubtless sometimes the 
case, but only when improperly performed. To allow 
numerous shoots to form and grow till they have reached, 
perhaps, 6 inches in length, and then, as is sometimes 
done, suddenly remove two thirds of them at the same time, 
is not such pruning as can possibly prove successful. The 
tree under such circumstances receives such a shock as will 
prove injurious. As soon as the buds begin swelling the 
operator must be in almost daily attendance, first to rub 
off the ill-placed and surplus buds, and afterwards to remove 
and suppress by an extremely gradual process the young 
shoots as they require it. Perhaps the greatest evils in 
summer pruning accrue from the practice I have here alluded 
to, and no pains or exertions should be spared to rectify 
this erroneous practice. 
Another and almost as great an evil is frequently com¬ 
mitted, especially by those who are desirous of having com¬ 
pact and elegantly shaped trees by pinching or pruning to 
excess. It is no uncommon occurrence even now to see an 
amateur—I should not like to say a gardener—set to work 
on a tree, and with the utmost zeal pinch every lateral as 
well as every terminal shoot, under the impression that he is 
following either Rivers or Du Breuil. Following them he 
certainly is, but in much the same sense that the country 
sign-painter is after the old masters, whose choice produc¬ 
tions he sometimes pretends to imitate. This is the chief 
reason why young gross-prowing trees are damaged by 
summer pruning, and the chief cause of its having been to 
some extent condemned. To be successful a free passage 
must be left in every main branch for the uninterrupted flow 
of the sap. If the lateral branches are all suppressed—and 
this should never be done at one time—the terminals must 
be left intact; and should either of these become too 
vigorous that should be pinched, while the laterals upon it, 
as well as the other terminal shoots, can be left unpinched 
till the proper balance of strength is secured. Sometimes it 
is necessary to remove a portion of the foliage to secure this 
end, but this practice should if possible be avoided, as it 
seldom answers the purpose, but frequently prevents the for¬ 
mation of buds at their base. 
In cultivating Apricots and Peaches on this method I 
have never found any advantage to accrue from the practice 
which some are said to have followed successfully—viz., of 
allowing numerous foreright spurs to remain on each branch. 
I never found the flowers on these set so freely, nor will the 
fruit swell so large as that on the young branches which are 
trained in close to the wall. The spurs also after a few years 
become stunted and unsightly; but in retaining only the side 
shoots they are easily managed, and by always preserving 
the bud at the base of each lateral for the succeeding 
year’s shoots the trees can be kept perfectly furnished with 
young wood from the top to the base without any difficulty, 
and without the least necessity for the use of the knife at any 
season. There is one great advantage gained by this method 
of treating Apricots and Peaches which must not be over¬ 
looked—the young shoots not only grow more evenly over 
every part of the tree, but as there are no gross shoots, and 
the sap is more regularly distributed, the wood ripens earlier 
and perfectly. So well, in fact, does it ripen, that there is no 
necessity for shortening the shoot in winter to remove un¬ 
ripened wood, as it ripens to the tip of each branch, and thus 
the wall or trellis can be covered in half the time usually re¬ 
quired when the pernicious system of severe winter pruning 
is followed. It is sometimes argued that unless this annual 
shortening of the branches is practised the dormant buds at 
the base of each shoot will not break, that a succession of 
well-placed young shoots cannot be secured, and that the 
trees quickly become naked and unsightly at the bottom ; but 
this is simply a bugbear that quickly vanishes before careful, 
judicious, and timely summer pruning, which is not only a 
more easy and pleasant method of treatment, but it is also 
more natural and decidedly the more profitable.— Yitisatof. 
TRENCHING GARDEN SOIL. 
Mr. Iggulden did good service in bringing the above subject 
before your readers. 1 thought, when reading his first article upon 
the waste of time in deep cultivation, that for weeks our Journal 
would be filled with the valuable experience of able correspondents. 
As the old saying goes, “ every lit le will help, 1 ' so I will give a little 
of my experience, and I am prompted to do so by Mr. Temple’s 
excellent article on page 104, when he mentions a new garden in 
which I was employed in the west of England twenty-seven years 
ago. The site was chosen partly because it was a convenient distance 
from the house, and partly because there was a small old garden there 
before ; but apart from these advantages the site was most objection¬ 
able, as it was with an extraordinary cost of labour that it was 
brought into anything like uniformity. A great part of the garden 
had to be laised 6 or 7 feet, and in other paits sandstone rock had to 
be excavated to the depth of 10 feet. Many of your readers will 
doubtless say, What has all this to do with trenching ? which I will 
now try to describe. 
In the low ground before mentioned a trench was opened 2 feet 
wide to utilise the stone and get it out of the way. About 12 inches 
of this stone was thrown loosely into the bottom of the trench. As 
the work proceeded a stiff marly clay was brought from the frame 
ground and other places where soil was not needed. This was mixed 
with the surface soil of the plot of ground and raised to the necessary 
height, trenches being partly filled with stone until the whole ground 
was finished and prepared for a crop. I might say that here 1 had 
considerable practice with pickaxe and wheelbarrow, both of which I 
have since found useful, and when the “ chief ” was cut of the way 
we young fellows with more strength than discretion used to vie with 
each other who could wheel the heaviest load of stone and laugh well 
