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14 CANKER IN NECTARINE TREES, 
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Article IV.—ON CANKER IN PEACH AND NECTARINE TREES. 
BY MR. WM. GREY. 
/ 
The management of Peach trees having been ably treated in the 
Register, I should not have attempted to advance any thing on the 
subject, had 1 not seen a few remarks by Mr. Eaton, p. 457; and as 
the opinions of practical men differ, I hope l may be allowed to give 
my opinion without disparagement to those advanced. 
I have had the charge of extensive Peach walls in the gardens at 
Beaufront, near Hexham, where there is 160 yards of flued wall, 
covered with peaches and nectarines, and during the six years that I 
was gardener at that place, I never covered one tree, as a small fire 
kept in the flues, was always sufficient to protect the blossoms from 
injury, and I never failed having a full crop of as fine fruit as any in 
Northumberland. And were I to judge from my own experience, 
no degree of cold in spring is ever able to produce the canker in 
Peach Trees. 
A handsome trained tree is both a credit to the gardener and an 
ornament to a garden, but I have seen great outrages committed in 
training by bending the branches to put them in straight lines; by 
thus pressing and laying the trees to the walls the bark is broken, 
and, when the sap begins to flow in spring, it meets with a stagnation 
where the bark is injured, the gum flows out, and that part generally 
cankers and dies off; because the rains and moisture constantly find 
their way into the wounded part. 
Every gardener knows that if a Peach tree, by any accident, be¬ 
comes bruised either with the hammer when nailing, or any other 
way, that part is sure to become cankered, and I verily believe that 
the canker is brought on trees more by twisting and bending their 
branches, to please the eye, than in any other way; no person is 
more particular than myself to have handsome well regulated trees, 
but none more carefully guard against distressing the bark, by twist¬ 
ing or straining the branches. I have peach trees under the man¬ 
agement of what are called old fashioned gardeners, where no re¬ 
spect has been paid to neat training, but their trees were healthy, 
quite free from canker, and produced very good fruit. 
The method of training I practice and prefer is fan-shaped ; if I 
could find time at that busy season the end of February or beginning 
of March, I would never prune any of my trees till that time, as all 
wounds heal much sooner and better at that season when the sap is 
flowing, than at any other. Trees that are pruned in Autumn 
and winter, are liable to decay in consequence of the wet lodging 
