June 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
we still should feel, gratefully feel, that we have 
not been labouring in vain. To announce this 
thus prominently for no other reason than because 
we would have our good work discerned would be 
no motive deserving of reprobation; but we do it 
from another motive, viz., to sustain what we urged 
the other day in favour of village Horticultural 
Societies. We then shewed that these societies are 
an efficient mode of encouraging a taste for garden 
ing among the tenants of “ the cottage homes of 
Englandand this letter bears ample testimony to 
the happy consequences springing from such an 
aroused taste. 
“ In this, my first letter to you, I feel it a duty to 
bear my humble testimony to the great good, moral 
and physical, your important work has conferred 
upon me, and I trust it has also been so to many 
others. At the time your work appeared, from its 
novelty I was induced to take in the Numbers as 
they appeared, and then followed a strong desire to 
have a garden of my own, which I succeeded in 
obtaining about the middle of February, and from 
that time I may date a complete reformation in my 
character. Previously, the money and time I had to 
spare was spent in the public-house ; now, both are 
spent in my garden, and to what a different end 1 
leave you to judge. I never had better health than 
now; I have more money at command; my wife and 
children are better clothed and fed, and I am happy; 
and for all this I feel I am your debtor. I am afraid 
of trespassing on your time, or I might fill the sheet 
with benefits. After this I need scarcely say that 
your first volume has the proudest place on my book 
shelf. And now, having said more than enough, 
perhaps, of myself, let me say something for others. 
I have been trying the gas-lime at your suggestion. 
When I entered on my garden (which contains 770 
square yards) it was quite smothered with weeds and 
grass, having been neglected last year. The walks 
were like a grass-field hi appearance; and after 
cleaning them the grass still sprang up, and caused 
me much trouble. I then, after the second scraping, 
thought of the gas-lime, which I applied—drawing 
it thinly over the walks with a spade, and crushing 
the lumps. I have now clean and hard walks; not 
a blade of grass has appeared, nor anything except 
the dandelion, which still pushes through. I have 
tried it also with potatoes, and the six rows where it 
was dug in previous to planting are easily to be dis¬ 
tinguished by their more healthy appearance. As a 
top-dressing I also tried it, and here its effects are 
wonderful. I threw it thinly over the half of a 
border where I planted some red potatoes, what are 
called here cups, the other half I left without; and 
now, while the former is without a weed, the latter is 
quite green with duckweed; and the potato tops 
are fully two inches higher on the limed ground 
than the other.” S. F. C.* 
Either next week, or the week following, accord¬ 
ingly as our arrangements may be completed, The 
Cottage Gardener will be enlarged, without any 
extra charge to its subscribers, to sixteen pages. Of 
the four pages thus added a portion will be devoted 
* We have the full address of the writer, but for obvious reasons 
merely publish his initials. 
151 
to advertisements, and the remainder to additional 
information in our present departments, and to one 
new department— The Stove. We do not make 
these additions without having kept primarily in 
view how we can increase our utility. By enlarging 
our size we shall not only be able to make the pages 
devoted to advertisements form a cover to each 
weekly number, so much desired by some of our sub¬ 
scribers, but we shall be able to devote more space 
to each branch of gardening, and to give directions 
for the culture of stove plants, many of which we 
find either are or can be cultivated by our readers. 
When these arrangements are completed we shall be 
the largest and cheapest periodical devoted to gar¬ 
dening, and were it necessary we could fill some of 
our columns with testimonials of even a higher and 
more gratifying character. 
THE FRUIT-GARDEN. 
Training Young Trees in General. —By this 
period young and healthy trees will have made 
lengthy shoots; and, where it is desirable the trees 
should take any specific form, much pains must be 
taken in the early period of their existence, in order 
to force them to assume the desired form. Modes of 
training are so various that we can do little more 
than speak of general principles. First of all, we 
advise that the distance of the main leaders be taken 
into particular consideration. We have known many 
a. capital mode of training defeated by neglect during 
the first year or two in this respect. The distance 
of the main leaders must be regulated by the 
character of the tree, in regard of its partiality for 
light, and the size of its leaves. Where the tying 
down system is intended to be carried out, the prin¬ 
cipal leaders should be a considerable distance apart. 
If on walls, such as the pear and the plum should 
be about ten inches, and the apricot about eight 
inches. As for the peach and nectarine, we may 
suppose them to be on the fan or radiating principle; 
and all we can advise about these is to place the 
shoots at such distances as that the leaves may 
overlap each other as little as possible. One point 
we must here advert to in connexion with the early 
training of young trees, whether on walls, espaliers, 
or as dwarf standards. Young trees, for a year (or 
it may be two years) after planting, are apt to pro¬ 
duce but a very few shoots, and these may, in the 
second year, take a somewhat luxuriant character. 
Now, part of the extra strength concentrated, in 
such cases, in the principal stem, may be diverted 
into the production of an increased number of fresh 
shoots, which will prove of much service in assisting 
to form the future fabric of the tree, merely by bind¬ 
ing the grosser shoots down betimes: this will cause 
more shoots to be developed than otherwise would 
be the case. Since the shoots which are making 
rapid growth, then, must be trained in the direction 
or form they are intended to assume, let it be done 
as early in the season as possible. Sometimes it 
happens that central shoots in young trees of the 
peach, the plum, the apricot, and the pear, are 
exceedingly luxuriant: when such is the case, it is 
highly advantageous to pinch off the point of one 
or two, in order to produce an increased amount of 
