ON BLIGHTS. 
25 
preserve themselves ; but should the weakness of the trees proceed 
from a fixed distemper it is the better way to remove them at first ; 
and after renewing the earth, plant new ones in their places ; for if the 
soil be a hot burning gravel or sand in which your peach trees are 
planted, you will generally find this to be the case after their roots have 
got beyond the earth of your border, for which reason it is much more 
advisable to dig them up and plant fresh ones. 
At this time we shall merely add some important directions concern¬ 
ing the proper management of fruit trees. There are many persons who 
suppose, that if their trees be kept up to the wall or espalier during the 
summer, so as not to hang in disorder, and in winter have a gardener 
to prune them, it is sufficient; but this is a mistake, the greatest care 
ought to be employed in the spring, when the trees are in vigorous 
growth, which is the only proper season to procure a quantity of good 
wood in the different parts of the trees, and to displace all useless 
branches as soon as they appear, that the vigour of the trees may supply 
such as are designed to remain, which will render them strong, and 
more capable of producing good fruit. If all the branches were per¬ 
mitted to remain, the most vigorous would imbibe the greatest share 
of the sap, whilst the rest would be starved, and only produce blossoms 
and leaves; for it is impossible any person (however well skilled in 
fruit trees) can reduce them into any tolerable order by winter prun¬ 
ing only, if they have been wholly neglected in spring. There are 
individuals also who do not entirely neglect their trees during summer, 
as those before mentioned, but resort to what they call summer pruning, 
neglecting them at the proper season, which is in April or May, when 
their shoots are produced, and only about midsummer go over them, 
nailing in ail their branches, except such as are produced fore-right 
from the wall, which they cut out, and at the same time often shorten 
most of the other branches. This is an entirely wrong practice, for 
those branches which are intended to bear in the succeeding year 
should not be shortened during the time of their growth. This 
stopping will cause them to produce one or two lateral shoots from the 
eye below the place where they were stopped; these will draw much 
of the strength from the buds of the first shoots, whereby they are often 
fiat, and do not produce their blossoms; but if the two lateral shoots 
are not entirely cut away at the winter pruning, they will prove inju¬ 
rious to the trees, as the shoots which thev produce will be what the 
French gardeners call water-shoots, and if suffered to remain on the 
trees till midsummer, will, as already has been observed, rob the other 
branches of their support; besides, by shading the fruit all the spring, 
and when the other branches are fastened to the wall, the fruit, by being 
vol. v.—-NO. LV. 
E 
