2L4 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, July 7, 1807. 
and they do not make so much noise in the world; but 
when winter arrives, and the ephemeral summer beauties 
of the floral world have passed away, how comfortable 
and respectable it is to have our fruit-room shelves 
covered with choice Pears and Apples, which we are 
assured will carry us on, in defiance of frosts and snow, 
until the succeeding May; and then, again, to see 
glorious Muscat Grapes, or the Hamburgh, Barbarossa, 
or West’s St. Peter’s in company with a good Black 
Jamaica Pine Apple. Is not this a tempting sight—one 
even more conducive to the social comforts of a family 
than even gay flowers, with all their holiday charms? 
There are five different processes which, all or in part, 
are requisite for our trained fruits in general. They 
are as follow's:—Pruning back, pinching or stopping, 
thinning, sucker removal, and cleaning from insects. 
But let us take a glance at some of our principal fruits, 
and first the Peach. Everybody now, of course, 
attends to what is termed disbudding, which has been 
so often described by me in The Cottage Gardener. 
I would here remind our friends that when Peaches 
and Nectarines are properly managed and in good 
health there is no occasion to leave any surplus shoots ; 
or, if any, the best plan is to spur them back, that is to 
say, cut or pinch them to within two or three leaves of 
their base. These will probably produce what may be 
termed spur blossom-buds. Such will sprout afresh in 
three weeks, when they must again he pinched, and so 
on to the end of the season. Pears which are producing 
too many breast shoots must be handled rather closely too. 
There is no occasion to be so fussy about the danger of 
removing a portion of this breast wood, for fear of the 
true spurs being excited into growth : there is not much 
danger of this at the end of June. I think it the best 
practice to remove coarse and superfluous shoots at 
twice, and those who are troubled with such spray may 
now venture to remove one-half, cutting them back to 
within three leaves of their base. The remainder may 
have their points pinched—at least, such as are to be re¬ 
moved at a second dressing—and in the beginning of 
August they may be removed altogether. AVhere Pears 
are not too strong, and there is little excess of spray, 
it will suffice to pinch off the points of the waste shoots, 
and to suffer them to remain on until the end of August. 
Plums under a course of training are apt to produce 
very coarse spray. Even trees otherwise weakly at the ex¬ 
tremities occasionally produce very coarse shoots at the 
lower portions of the trees. If there be any naked space 
of wall, fence, or trellis to cover, such should be pinched 
when about six inches in length; if not, they are best 
entirely removed. There is no occasion for pinching 
back the small breast wood of trained Plums, inasmuch 
as they ripen their wood freely, and the fruit is apt to 
crack if too naked as to foliage. Apricots require very 
similar management to Plums, excepting that it is re¬ 
quisite to admit more sunlight to the blossom-spurs, 
and, indeed, to the fruit. It is necessary, however, to 
exercise a peculiar jealousy with regard to the Apricot, 
as it is so very liable to premature decay in portions of 
the tree. Any portion which looks leaner than the rest 
may fairly be suspected, and extra shoots may at once 
be trained in to provide against a failure. Those por¬ 
tions which are destined to this awkward end may 
generally be known, a summer previous to their decay, 
by their ceasing to make new growth of any consequence. 
There is much complaint this season of this odd occur¬ 
rence, for which no person up to the present moment 
has fairly accounted. There can b t e little doubt, how¬ 
ever, that the stocks used for the Apricot are not all 
that can be desired, and this stock question is one which 
must some day assume a much greater degree of im¬ 
portance than has hitherto been accorded to it. 
Apples under training, perhaps, give less trouble than 
most fruits. Being generally grown on the Paradise 
stock they do not produce that superfluity of wood which 
those grown on the free or Crab stock do; a little hand¬ 
ling, therefore, will suffice. As few young Apples bear 
on the young spray there is no reason for encouraging 
a host of twigs that must give way beneath the pruner’s 
knife at the ensuing winter. Those pruned back should 
have about three eyes or buds left at the base of the 
shoot, for these will frequently give rise to real fruit- 
spurs. Cherries need little summer pruning; yet they 
require a Midsummer examination, and, like the Apples, 
in all cases threo or more eyes should be left at the base 
of each shoot removed. The Morello kinds are apt to 
produce most shoots, and these, too, may have a spur 
base left, as Morellos bear very fine fruit occasionally 
on such spurs. 
And now, after this brief review of a few summer 
duties, let me point to the propriety of destroying all 
suckers from fruit trees of whatever kind, from the 
aristocratic-looking Peach down to the plebeian Goose¬ 
berry. This is peculiarly a summer duty; for of what 
use is it to suffer annually trees to produce suckers, to 
the detriment of the fruit and the true wood, only to be 
removed at each ensuing winter? In eradicating these 
pests care should be taken to pare them away as clean 
as may be; for be it remembered that each sucker 
topped only without eradication is merely productive of a 
host of rubbish. I have seen trees with suckers thus 
treated with a dozen or so of old sucker crowns like a 
Willow plantation. Most fruits are liable to these pests, 
and their prevalence generally argues bad management 
in the earlier stages of the tree’s history; but of this 
more on another occasion. Let then, I say, every sucker 
be removed by Midsummer, or speedily afterwards. 
Last, but by no means least, comes the insect affair. 
“No quarter” must be the word. The Apples will 
exhibit American blight or cobweb caterpillars, or flies, 
perhaps, innumerable; the Peaches will possibly hoist 
signals of distress in the red spider line, or still the 
aphides may haunt them; the Cherries may groan under 
the pressure of the dolphin fly; the Apricots may have 
their flags furled and their poor foliage gathered in 
bundles through the insidious arts of the caterpillar of 
the red bar moth, as well as other enemies; the Pears, 
too, have their evils to contend with, albeit they are 
not so much a prey to those hosts of aphides which so 
much infest some other fruits. And what shall we 
say as to the gardener’s troubles? Why, that he is 
just like the Alpine traveller of whom we have all 
read. He no sooner surmounts one peak or difficulty 
than others arise in the distant horizon. I well 
remember that when a little boy, and schooling on 
the banks of the Thames, I occasionally had a run 
up the river’s side from Putney on the way to Kew. 
Now, this part of the river, as many know, describes 
a curve, and in those days, some fifty years since, 
there was a sort of Pollard Willow growing in a kind 
of line parallel with the batiks. On rounding each 
curve or twist I could now and again fix my eye on 
one of these Willows which stood prominently, and 
formed as it were a point. Hope would constantly 
whisper in my mind that there must be something ex¬ 
traordinary beyond this Willow stump ; but, alas! on 
reaching it there was another just such a stump ahead, 
and I have run thus in hopes of seeing the whole river 
for an hour at a stretch; but, alas ! never saw the 
whole at once to this day. Such is life itself, and such 
is gardening, for it is time I got back to my lesson. 
I have nothing particular now to offer in the way of 
destroying insects, &c.; nothing but such an extra 
amount of assiduity as is seldom seen. I still hold 
by the same curative articles, tobacco, sulphur, hand 
picking, and diligence. The chief thing is to be early 
in the field. R,. Errington. 
