81 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
course of formation. The coarsest sprouts may, there¬ 
fore, be totally removed where not requisite as soon as 
they are half a dozen inches in length. They will require 
a second dressing in a few weeks afterwards, when a 
selection of short-jointed shoots may be reserved for 
tying down iu July. Plums, however, do not require 
so much intense sunlight as tender Pears or Peaches. 
Apricots. —This tender fruit tree requires all the 
sunlight of our climate, and means should be takeu 
betimes to secure it. The leading shoots should not be 
pinched unless very gross, and it is required that they 
branch much in order to cover the wall. When that is 
the case the points of such may be taken off when the 
shoots have grown about eight or nine inches; they will 
then sprout right and left, and will have time to become 
ripened by the autumn. In healthy-growing trees many 
foreright shoots will be produced, which it will not be 
desirable to retain for want of room; these must be 
pinched to a couple or three eyes when about four 
inches iu length. It is not well, I think, to disbud 
them, as they are apt to cause a considerable blemish in 
the bark ; and, moreover, by pinching them back as 
here suggested they frequently generate a kind of spawn 
eyes at their base, which are very likely to become 
blossom-buds. These proceedings must take place at 
two or three different times, extending over May and 
June, towards the end of which the tree should be 
well looked over, in order to obtain plenty of sunlight 
both to the ripening fruit and the blossom-spurs for the 
future year. It not unfrequently happens that Apricots 
will make a fresh growth immediately the fruit is 
gathered: this shows how much the fruit must draw 
from the system of the tree. In such case I think it 
prudent to suffer them to produce a little spray for 
two or three weeks, not mor6; but by the middle of 
August every stray shoot of this later growth should 
be pinched back to a couple of leaves, in order to let 
the sun shine fairly on the clusters of spurs which 
contain the future blossoms. There can be little doubt 
that much of the bad setting in Apricots is occasioned 
by the want of sunlight at the end of summer. If 
shoots are too crowded and gross, or waste spray is 
suffered to shade the spurs, we may fairly expect to find 
something amiss in the ensuing spring. 
I may now offer a few remarks applicable to all in 
some degree, and which may be called maxims in 
disbudding. The first thing I would advert to is 
climate. This differs much, as we all know, even in our 
little island. Surely no gardener would dream of training 
the shoots of tender fruit trees as thickly in Northum¬ 
berland as in Devon. The mode of training, also, and 
distance of the principal shoots must be taken into 
consideration. Then there is something in locality. 
Some gardens are particularly favoured, and well known 
to be so; others, from some cause or other, are un¬ 
fortunate as regards the accumulation of heat. Training, 
therefore, and, of course, the amount of spray reserved, 
must be ruled in some degree by these considerations. 
The habit of producing too much spray in trees is an 
affair deserving the most grave consideration. The 
labour, or, in other words, time consumed in removing 
waste spray, the result of over-culture, is in the 
aggregate enormous. It is this consideration which 
leads many to carry the dwarfing system to an extreme. 
Judicious planting is the best preventive; and as for 
curative measures I know of none equal to judicious 
and well-timed root pruning. 
Until the readers of The Cottage Gardener can get 
their trees established to their mind I must beg to re¬ 
commend most earnestly that they pay assiduous atten¬ 
tion to disbudding and summer pinching or pruning. 
R. Errington. 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, May 12, 1857. 
MEETING OF THE HORTICULTURAL 
SOCIETY.— May 5th. 
This was an extra good May Exhibition of fruit and | 
flowers. There were also some very good collections 
of home and foreign-grown vegetables, but the most | 
gratifying part of the business was the election of 
forty-three new Fellows, all in “one lump” at last. 
They passed an act at the Anniversary Meeting that so 
many of the new Fellows present must object to a pro¬ 
ceeding before that proceeding can be a bother to the 
rest, and goodness knows how many more than one 
person then present would wish to inflict the penalty 
of a two hours’ balloting on those who reformed 
the Horticultural Society, and brought it triumphantly 
through that blackness and darkness of despair which 
both Houses of Parliament foreshadowed to us in our 
struggles this time last year. But gardeners have now 
got their foot into the Society, and if they allow it to go 
wrong a third time they will have to bo blamed more 
than their betters. Well, the fruit was such that the 
worst of it, a few years back, would have been a credit 
to the best gardener in the country. The Melons were 
extraordinary, the Pine Apples ordinary, the Grapes 
exceedingly good, and the Cherries exceedingly like 
them; the Straivberries were more like the Melons, not 
in size of course, but in excellence ; the Peaches were as 
fine, and soft, and blushing as love in a summer-house, 
and fully as sweet and as well-flavoured; Cucumbers 
were never such “fruit” before, and the mayor of 
Ipswich himself could hardly have done them more 
justice; and between Frost and Snow we had the 
scullery, still-room, and pantry as luxuriously supplied 
as if it were summer and sunshine since last Christmas. 
The. royal gardeners kept back their Grapes for the 
christening, and right too; but her Grace of Sutherland 
did not “ walk” over the course. Her next-door neighbour 
of Keele Hall and his Grace of Bedford were nose and 
nose, and only a head and half a neck behind her in 
Grapes, while Her Majesty was just up behind the ear 
of her Grace at the winning-post with Cherries, both 
having the same kind, the Circassian Cherry , which is a 
most capital Cherry for early forcing, and looks much 
like the old Blackheart Cherry. Mr. Fleming sent about 
six dozen of these in his dish, and Mr. Ingram not quite 
so many. Another Mr. Fleming, F.H.S., gardener in 
the same family, but at Cleveden, near Maidenhead, 
sent a small dish of May Duke Cherries, which had no 
chance against the size and colour of the Circassians. 
The three bunches of Black Hamburgh Grapes from 
Trentham were put at the head of the table—the place 
of honour—and were said to be the very finest samples 
that ever were exhibited before the Society; and, “ were 
it not for these,” those from Mr. Hill, gardener to Mr. 
Sneyd, at Keele Hall, and also from Mr. Forbes, of 
Woburn Abbey, would prove that British gardeners are 
above all others in the early cultivation of the Grape. 
The Messrs. Sparry and Campbell, Queen’s Graperies, 
Brighton, were only a shade behind, and most of the 
rest were excellent except one dish of half-ripe Sweet- 
icaters. Flow any gardener could cut green Grapes on 
purpose, as it were, it is difficult to say. 
The best Pine Apple was from Mr. Davis, gardener to 
Lady Bridport, a Black Prince , weighing 5 lbs. Oozs.; 
the rest were Queens from 2 lbs. to 3 lbs. 
There was only one dish of Peaches, the Royal George , 
from Mr. Hill, of Keele Hall, “ one of our bestj fruit 
growers.” 
Strawberries were numerous in dishes and in kinds. 
Keens Seedlings took the first prize to the best Straw¬ 
berry grower in the country, Mr. Smith, a market gar¬ 
dener at Twickenham. Never was the kind seen in 
better style. Mr. Tillyard, F.H.S., exhibited three 
kinds in double rows side by side in one haslet— 
