170 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
[December 19. 
i the side shoots ought to he cut to two or three eyes, or 
pair of eyes, according to their strength, the strongest to 
have three eyes, or three pairs of eyes, where two 
; opposite eyes come at the same joint, as in the honey¬ 
suckle ; and the weakest shoots may he left with a single 
i eye only, or one pair of eyes. 
When a climber is trained fan-fashion, or like the 
! spokes of a wheel, as the shoots get higher they get 
I wider apart, and when two of them stand so far apart up 
a good way, one of the side shoots may he trained in 
between them, and the rule with tins go-between shoot 
is the same as with a leading shoot—one-third of its 
length ought to he left. In other cases, where there is 
not room to train in one of these side shoots to form 
another branch, a short piece of young wood from six 
inches to a couple of feet may be nailed in a temporary 
way; and when it has flowered it should be cut down 
close to the last eye, and another one laid in the same 
place for another season; and in the summer, when a 
more than ordinary strong shoot grows from the sides, it 
ought to be stopped when it is six inches long, else it 
would assume the habit of a leading shoot, and so de- . 
range the training. Another advantage of stopping 
such shoots is, that they make some more growth, 
and flower later in the season than those that needed 
not to be stopped. Now, every plant which flowers 
| on the current year’s growth, and is to be pruned for the 
sake of the flowers only, should be done exactly after 1 
this manner until such time as the allotted space for it is 
filled up ; and when that is effected the only difference is, 
that the topmost shoots, or the end of the main branches, 
must be cut in as short as the side inferior growths. 
When any of this class is newly planted, and especially 
if it be half-hardy, as the passion-flower, it is not a good 
plan to leave much wood uncut during the first two or 
three years. There is nothing to be gained by leaving 
long pieces at the winter .pruning, neither will there be 
less bloom the following season. Suppose a young 
passion-flower, or Manderilla, has reached the top of a 
ten or twelve feet wall, the first or second season you 
gain nothing in the long run by cutting either of them 
down to five or six feet; they answer much better if cut 
to within a few inches of the ground, three or four 
shoots to one will rise next season, and each of them 
will be much stronger than your six feet length if left; j 
besides the facility of guarding them against frost. The j 
Glycine in particular, as it does not bloom for the first 
three or four years, if planted very young, should be cut 
down the three lirst winters to the ground; as if it 
flowered on the wood made the same season, which it 
does not. We have all of us heard of Glycines standing 
for years without blooming, or even making much young 
wood, and the reason for its standing still is, that at 
first going off pieces of unripened wood were left so long, i 
with a view to get it on as fast as possible, that they had ! 
not sufficient energy to start afresh next year, and the 
summer’s sun baked the dwindling branches into a hide¬ 
bound monument of bad management. I think I said 
last year, the best way to do with a Glycine in this plight 
w'ould be to lay the whole shoot down horizontally, so as 
to cause a fresh bud to start from the bottom; and that l 
is a good make shift; but the better plan is not to risk j 
the necessity for doctoring at all, but to cut the fellow j 
down until the roots were in a condition to send up a 
shoot of such strength as would ripen the lower three or j 
four feet of it before the end of August. A good practical 
pruner with his eyes bandaged could tell to an inch 
how low a shoot of it should be cut after attaining this 
strength: he would be guided by the hardness of the 
wood ; and if there should be an error, it had better be in 
the shortness of the piece left, than that some inches of j 
spongy young wood should remain. 
The next pruning in order, after pruning annual j 
shoots, is that of two-yearlings—such as Mr. Erruigton’s j 
peach-trees. They grow one year and flower the next, 
as gardeners say; not meaning, of course, that they flower 
but once in two years. The wood they made in 1850, 
will produce flowers in 1851, but never afterwards from 
the same parts. But lest I be root-pruned myself, I 
shall no more refer to them, but take to another old- 
fashioned family, the most ill-used of all the plants I 
know in the way of pruning, I mean the Barberries, which 
used to be hard dealt with for bringing the mildew on 
the farmers’ corn, before they found out the use and 
abuse of draining their land. Who would prune a bar¬ 
berry ? But if the barberries, and there are many of 
them, were properly attended to as to pruning, we have 
very few shrubs that would look much better in the 
autumn, when loaded with clusters of bright red, black, 
or blue berries. The Asiatic barberry, which is all but 
evergreen, forms one of the most handsome little trees I 
know for a corner of the lawn, when confined to a single 
stem six or seven feet high, and then a spreading head 
of well balanced branches loaded with oval purple fruit, 
that would hang on all the winter, were it not that the 
birds are so fond of them. The dwarf evergreen ones 
with holly-like leaves (which used to go by the name 
of Malionias), do not require much pruning, and, 
therefore, will not be referred to as examples for pruning 
for two-year-old shoots. Therefore, the oldest of all, the 
garden barberry, will answer all the purposes of this 
paper. 
A barberry bush is a young plant at one hundred 
years old; and no one has ever heard of its dying of 
sheer old age. If properly managed in deep rich loamy 
soil on a rock or chalk bottom, it would grow as big as 
any of the apple-trees in Herefordshire ; not so thick in 
the stem, it is true, but fully as high in the head. It is 
on record, that in thirty years it made as many feet, up¬ 
wards ; and that is quite enough for any apple-tree. 
When it gets very old indeed, or very badly managed, as 
often happens, tlie pollen is so dry and scanty that it 
does not do its duty, and always when that happens 
there can be no seeds; but the berries come the same; 
and when wiseacres meet with a bush in this condition, 
forthwith it is set down in a book as a new kind— 
asperma, of course, from a, not, and spenna, a seed; and 
who can doubt it! but set a good pruner over it, and the 
next edition will have it— polysperma instead; from 
polys, many, and sperma, a seed;—and from these many 
seeds, if people took the trouble to sow them, many more 
new kinds would come up—some with white berries, 
some with yellow, some with purple, blue, or black—and 
some of all colours perhaps : and why not some as sweet 
as a strawberry? Why, indeed, but that we do not know 
how to comeat that yet. I am glad, however, to see that 
what I said about our backwardness in getting better 
fruits than our neighbours, the other day, has attracted 
the notice of a contemporary, who made a capital leading 
article on the subject; although a brother chip was 
badly, or iri bad taste, snubbed for not quoting a French¬ 
man in full, about Virginian apples coming sour at first 
from seeds, as Mr. Knight’s apples and cherries used to 
do at Downton Castle, and which well-nigh caused us 
the loss oi the Black Eagle cherry altogether. But let us 
put our shoulders together and see if we cannot get a 
better barberry than the Emperor of Austria, who has the 
best of them growing naturally in his own dominions— 
if, perchance, he has any dominions by this time to get 
barberries from. This Austrian barberry is, after all, 
really a good thing; and Loudon says it is to the com¬ 
mon barberry what the apple is to the crab. But it does 
not come true from seeds, it must be had from layers, 
and is the best sort to try experiments with for a ven¬ 
ture at an improvement in barberries. Who would mat 
up currants and gooseberries, if barberries and fuchsia 
berries could be had for table down to Christmas ? 
In anticipation of such tilings, let us learn how to 
