332 
close on the heels of their removal, healthy trees lay in 
more sap by a last effort at growth. Now, there is no 
objection to this, so long as no late spray is allowed to 
shade the natural spurs or blossom-buds for the ensuing 
year. This must, by no means, be permitted. A great 
portion of the bad setting, so frequently complained of, 
is chargeable on this bad practice. As far as our ex¬ 
perience goes, no fruit requires so much intense sun¬ 
light actiug immediately on the embryo fruit buds for 
the ensuing year, as does the apricot. Hence the reason 
why, in some parts of the country, we are frequently 
astonished to observe splendid crops on the gable or 
chimney side of some cottage or farm-house. Not that 
the sun shines any hotter on the cottage than on the 
garden wall; but that the cottager, like the cat in the 
fable, has but one shift with his Moorpark—viz., to cut 
away all breast shoots betimes, “to save farther bother.” 
But here behold the difference at the root between the 
cottage apricot and the pampered tree of the garden ! 
The first, planted in an olf-hand way originally, amongst 
ordinary soil, foundation stuff, and scrapings of any 
kind, and most likely a bed of exhausting herbaceous 
plants, or ordinary flowers and shrubs, standing for 
years over the roots ; or, it may be, a stone pavement. 
In our kitchen-gardens, how different the conditions. 
The most powerful soils, prepared some thirty inches 
deep, and afterwards a system of vegetable cropping 
carried on, requiring, perhaps twice a-year, a vast 
amount of manure. This, with the occasional infringe¬ 
ments of the spade, produces, of course, fitful growths, 
productive of an undue amount of shade; whilst the 
cottager’s produces just enough wood annually to en¬ 
large the fabric of the tree a little —and only a little. 
Such we have witnessed in hundreds of cases in the 
north-west of England, and have not unfrequently been 
shamed by the superior crop of a clodpole. 
Our advice, then, is—the moment these remarks meet 
the eye, let every “ breast shoot,” productive of shade to 
the little nests of blossom-buds beneath, be henceforth 
close pinched. If, however, any terminal points are 
still disposed to ramble, and thereby enlarge the tree, 
and cover naked spaces of walling, by all means let 
them do so as long as they please. 
Pears. —All the more tender kinds, as Winter Nellis, 
Beurre Ranee, 1)' Aremberg, Colmar d'Auch, Passe Col¬ 
mar, Ne p>lus Meuris, &c., will be immensely benefited 
by total removal of all immature-looking spray. All 
such may be at once known by its pale colour, by its 
succulence, and even by a tendency still to extend. 
Those on the quince stock may, unless very gross, be 
allowed to grow as long as they please; for the proba¬ 
bility is, “ taking them in the lump,” that they will 
make too little wood. 
We arc going over our Pears now, August 10th, and 
slipping off every young shoot produced from the points 
of those pinched in May and June. In addition, the 
point of every growing shoot is pinched, excepting 
leaders, those required to extend the frame-work of the 
tree. In all bearing trees, too, of some age, the ter¬ 
minal points should be left growing to the last, in order 
to attract the sap well to the extremities, thereby in¬ 
ducing a constant supply to the fruit in its passage. 
How often do we see pears heavily laden at the ex¬ 
tremities, yet barren at the lower portions, where a con¬ 
stant disposition exists to produce breast wood, coarse 
as a forest tree, the extremities meanwhile starved, and 
the fruit half-fed. This is traceable to the old spurring 
system, or the leaving, originally, a heel of the young 
breast shoot with the fallacious idea of producing spurs. 
That such have occasionally produced spurs, we do 
not deny ; but if true to themselves, and their conditions, 
coarse robbers must be the result in ninety cases out of 
a hundred. How is it likely that the fruit can be duly 
nourished, when the sap is appropriated by these as fast 
August 20. 
as it is produced. In addition to these proceedings, 
those who have been neglectful at the proper period 
had better go over their trees, and remove all the useless 
shoots—those which would not be reserved at the winter’s 
pruning. 
Cherries, Plums, &c., will require a little ex¬ 
amination, especially the latter; but these will give 
little trouble; the principles of handling aro nearly 
identical with the pear, &c. 
Alpine Strawberries should have every late runner 
trimmed away, and slate, or some impervious material, 
placed beneath them, giving it a slight inclination to 
cast off the wet. These, in dry weather, would enjoy 
a watering with liquid manure. 
Autumnal Raspberries.— Every useless sucker should 
be plucked away in the end of August, in order to get 
sunlight on the fruit. If they appear poor, liquid 
manure may be given with great advantage ; of course 
mulchings have been applied. R. Errington. 
RHODODENDRONS. 
The next six weeks, or two months, being the best 
time in the year for removing and transplanting hardy 
Rhododendrons, I shall put together to-day the notes 
and observations I have made for a long time on this 
family, so as to refresh the memories of our readers who 
are about to remove all, or one-half, of their best Rho¬ 
dodendrons, so as to give them double the room, and 
enable the plants to have freedom on all sides, that they 
may bloom down to the surface of the ground, each 
plant being a full specimen in itself, of which nothing 
can be seen but leaves and flowers. Whenever you can 
see a stem, or any part of a Rhododendron’s wood, that 
grows as a bush in the flower-garden, unless the plant 
is a standard, depend upon it that plant has either been 
badly managed in former days, or else it is a variety not 
worth cultivating, owing to its bad habit of growing in a 
loose, straggling way. Twenty years ago, last May, I 
walked round a single plant of a common Rhododen¬ 
dron, not far from the Botanic Garden, at Manchester, 
and it was just thirty steps, or thirty yards, in circum¬ 
ference. It was then not more than five feet high, and 
not the least branch could you see all the way round ; 
nothing but leaves and blossom buds. Ten or twelve 
years after that, I saw a bank of Rhododendrons on 
the north-east side of a kitchen-garden, the wall of which 
was twelve feet high, but some of the Rhododendrons 
were higher than the wall. They were planted quite 
thick, nobody there knew when, and nothing in the way 
of thinning or pruning was done to them ever since, and 
of all the horrors ascribed to the influence of the night¬ 
mare, none could come up, in my eyes, to those presented 
by this long bank of lanky Rose-bays. My third instance 
is of a spruce old gardener, who made a fuss in his day, 
but not with Rhododendrons, for he went to a great 
expense in making large boundary belts and borders of 
Rhododendrons for the pleasure-grounds of his employer, 
one-half of bog, and one-half of peat, or heath soil, for 
some, and all the compounds possible with soils for 
others; also, he had the opinions of Mr. Standish, Mr. 
Hosea Waterer, and Mr. John Waterer, of Bagshot, the 
greatest Rhododendron merchants in the world—but all 
would not do. This gardener could not bloom a Rhodo¬ 
dendron, out of some thousands, worth looking at; and 
for nine or ten years he tried all the experiments with 
them that have ever been suggested, but all with the same 
result. In short, this gardener could not grow Rhodo¬ 
dendrons at all; and the cause of his failure was, that his 
beds were cut out of chalk, or so near the chalk that the 
Rhododendrons would not live above two or three years 
in that garden. Some said that it was the peat that did 
not suit them; others maintained that the open and 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
