362 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
April  28,  1898. 
methods  that  are  practised  by  genuine  gardeners  and  skilled 
cultivators  with  the  best  jDOssible  results. 
It  is  not  difficult  by  intelligent  methods  to  train  trees  into  habits 
of  fruitfulness  without  impairing  their  health ;  but  neither  is  it 
difficult  to  cover  young  trees  with  blossom  before  they  are  capable  of 
bearing  many  clusters  of  fruit  without  constitutional — in  many  cases 
permanent — enfeeblement.  There  are  at  this  moment  thousands  of 
young  fruit  trees  in  various  parts  of  the  country  which  have  been 
planted  one  or  two  years,  and  their  few  long  young  branches  either 
not  shortened  at  all,  or  insufficiently,  which  are  now  wreathed  with 
clusters  of  blossom,  expanded,  or  approaching  that  stage.  Almost 
every  bud  seems  to  have  changed  from  a  small  leaf  or  wood  bud  into 
a  blossom  bud,  including  that  at  the  end  of  each  branch.  If  these 
blossoms  are  allowed  to  set  fruit  that  will  be  the  best  possible  way  of 
making  the  trees,  not  free  growers  and  increasingly  healthy  bearers, 
but  practically  useless  chronic  cripples. 
All  such  precocious  pigmies  should  be  relieved  of  most  or  all  their 
blossom  trusses  at  once,  and  it  is  especially  important  to  remove  all 
terminal  clusters,  cutting  the  tips  off  the  branches  back  to  the  most 
promising  small  wood  bud  that  can  be  found,  and  failing  its  discovery 
to  the  cleanest  and  healthiest  looking  portion  of  the  stem,  for, 
if  possible,  forcing  latent  buds  into  activity.  The  primary  object 
■with  such  trees  should  be  to  obtain  free  growth,  not  bouquets  of 
blossom.  It  is  very  easy  by-and-by,  as  the  trees  gain  strength,  to 
turn  them  into  valuable  fruit  producers. 
Not  only  are  many  recently  j^lanted  trees  in  the  open,  which  were 
intended  to  develop  into  serviceable  bushes  or  standards,  in  danger  of 
being  stunted,  perhaps  beyond  recovery,  by  the  transformation  of 
growth  buds  into  blossom  buds,  but  there  are  also  a  large  number  of 
cordon  trees  intended  to  cover  lofty  walls,  that  will  not  reach  the  top 
for  years,  if  ever  they  do,  unless  relieved  of  the  blossom  buds,  which 
form  a  cluster  at  the  apex.  When  such  trees  are  permitted  to 
terminate  in  a  bunch  of  spurs,  as  many  are,  it  is  no  easy  matter  to 
make  them  produce  free  extension  growth.  Every  young  cordon  tree 
that  is  crowned  with  a  cluster  of  blossom  should  have  that  cluster 
removed  at  once,  with  others  immediately  below  it.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  the  side  branches  of  espalier  trees,  as  well  as  to  trees  that 
are  intended  to  have  their  branches  trained  horizontally  to  walls,  or 
the  chance  of  their  free  extension  will  be  extremely  remote.  We 
know  of  trees,  not  a  few,  of  all  the  forms  named  that  will  never  cover 
the  wall  space  hoped  for,  or  meet  each  other  in  lines  of  espaliers,  if 
not  assisted  in  some  such  way  as  suggested,  and  many  of  them  must 
be  cut  very  severely  back  indeed  before  anything  like  satisfactory 
growth  can  be  expected.  Asa  matter  of  fact  they  ought  to  have  been 
cut  back  long  ago,  or  perhaps  better  still,  burnt.  True,  they  cost  little. 
They  were  called  “  cheap  ”  trees,  but  actually  worth  nothing,  They 
were  worse  than  no  trees  at  all,  as  occupying  and  wasting  space  that 
might  have  been  utilised  with  healthy,  thrifty  trees,  combining  free 
growth  with  fruitfulness. 
e  last  week  gave  advice  to  a  correspondent  (page  358)  on  the 
management  of  a  “  stubborn  Pear  tree.”  It  was  a  large  tree  when 
moved,  and  though  it  blossomed  freely,  it  neither  produced  fruit 
nor  made  any  growth.  We  do  not  know  whether  the  tree  was 
purchased,  or  removed  from  one  part  of  the  garden  to  another; 
nor  does  it  matter.  We  suspected  its  state,  and  advised  accordingly- 
Samjde  branches  have  now  been  received,  and  they  are  even  worse 
than  anticipated.  They  are  indurated,  attenuated,  more  or  less 
contorted,  with  not  a  growth  bud  to  be  seen,  every  one  of  such 
buds  having  changed  into  blossom  buds,  and  these  so  weak  that  not 
one  flower  in  a  thousand  has  sufficient  vitality  to  set  a  Pear.  Such 
trees  as  this,  and  there  are  numbers  of  them  in  the  country  struggling 
between  life  and  death,  can  only  be  saved,  if  then,  and  made  useful 
by  removing  entirely  the  weaker  of  the  stunted  branches,  and  cutting 
the  more  promising  boldly  back  to  more  than  two-thirds  their' length 
to  the  cleanest  and  most  healthy  parts,  as  if  preparing  for  grafting. 
Then  by  concentrating  the  root  force,  such  as  it  is,  on  the  shortened 
parts  and  syringing  frequently  in  dry  weather,  latent  buds  may 
push,  and  the  closer  the  pruning  the  more  likely  will  they  be  to  do  , 
so,  and  produce  healthy  growths.  We  experimented  with  some  trees 
in  the  direction  indicated  four  years  ago.  They  are  now  as  healthy 
as  could  be  desired,  having  made  excellent  growth,  whereas  if  they 
had  been  left  alone  they  would  certainly  have  died. 
Some  people  are  so  fond  of  a  bargain  that  they  rejoice  in  the 
possession  of  big,  stunted,  nursery  stagers  full  of  blossom  buds,  for 
half  a  crown  each,  whereas  they  would  have  to  give  2s.  for  trees 
not  half  the  size,  and  with  not  a  tenth  in  number  of  blossom  buds 
on  the  clean  young  branches.  Such  purchasers  are  satisfied  they 
have  got  the  best  of  the  vendor  in  the  transaction,  but  nothing  is 
more  certain  than  that  the  vendor  has  got  the  best  of  them  in 
getting  the  large-topped  and  few-rooted  moribunds  off  his  hands. 
It  is  pleasant  to  see  a  good  display  of  bold  blossom  on  healthy 
trees,  but  pitiable  to  observe  so  many  trees  in  a  comparatively 
infantile  state  so  cruelly  overladen,  that  they  can,  if  left  unaided, 
be  little  better  than  stunted  starvelings  the  remainder  of  their  days. 
We  have  lately  had  the  pleasure  of  visiting  two  fruit  gardens — 
one  of  them  mainly  experimental,  the  other  commercial.  The  former 
is  Chiswick,  where  the  same  varieties  of  Apples  on  different  stocks 
are,  with  trivial  exceptions,  all  growing  and  blossoming  alike.  There 
are  dozens  of  young  Apple  trees,  and  not  a  man  in  England  capable 
of  determining  which  kinds  of  stocks  half  of  them  are  on.  Their 
healthy  branches  are  all  alike  wreathed  with  blossom.  The  fine 
pyramid  Pears,  as  well  as  cordons  on  walls,  are  crowded  with 
blossom.  Plums  and  Cherries  on  walls  are  white  as  sheets;  but 
a  valuable  collection  of  young  Plums,  planted  by  Mr.  Barron  and 
grown  as  bushes,  have  been  denuded  of  nine-tenths  of  their  blossom 
buds  by  what  sentimentalists  describe  as  that  “  friend  of  the 
gardener,”  the  sparrow.  With  favourable  weather  Chiswick  will 
be  full  of  fruit,  except  Peaches.  The  terrible  blizzard  on  Boat  Race 
Day  settled  the  blossom  on  wall  trees  as  completely  as  Oxford  settled 
Cambridge  ;  while  the  prolonged  continnance  of  a  dense  fog,  when  the 
trees  under  glass  were  in  bloom,  brought  down  the  blossoms.  One 
late-flowering  tree  was  not  in  bloom  during  the  reign  of  the  fog  fiend, 
and  the  blossoms  of  this  tree  are  setting  freely. 
The  other  fruit  “  garden  ”  visited  was  that  of  Mr.  Edwin  Ellis  in 
Surrey.  It  comprises  about  80  acres,  and  as  viewed  during  blossoming 
time  from  a  commanding  point  on  the  high  saddle-like  ridge  that  runs 
through  it,  and  looking  down  the  deep  valleys  on  either  hand,  the 
four  sharply  sloping  sides  occupied  by  standard  Plum  and  Apple  trees 
rising  above  an  undergrowth  of  bush  fruit — chiefly  Gooseberries — the 
scene  was  such  as  could  not  in  its  way  be  seen  elsewhere.  It  was  an 
undulating  cloud  of  silvery  blossom  in  a  setting  of  tender  green.  A 
plantation  of  young  Pears  on  the  ridge  presented  a  mass-  of  blossom — 
by  far  too  much,  and  if  a  tithe  of  it  sets  there  will  have  to  be  a  severe 
thinning  of  fruit.  The  soil  is  of  a  sandy  nature,  and  rain  with  cloudy 
nights  urgently  desired. 
The  effect  of  root-pruning  in  arresting  the  extension  of  growth 
buds,  and  thus  transforming  them  into  blossom  buds,  is  strikingly 
apparent  in  a  new  plantation  of  a  few  acres  of  young  Apple  trees, 
the  trees  having  been  thinned  out  of  the  larger  area.  They  had 
been  cut  back  twice  or  thrice  after  planting,  for  increasing  the  requisite 
number  of  branches,  and  these  allowed  to  extend.  The  necessary 
shortening  of  the  roots  in  the  removal  of  the  trees  caused  the  buds 
to  change,  and  each  branch  is  now  clothed  with  blossom  from  base 
to  summit.  There  has  been  no  summer  pinching  or  any  such 
manipulative  prosess,  and  none  was,  or  is,  needed  for  making  healthy 
Apple  trees  fruitful.  It  is  a  case  of  the  thin  disposal  of  the  branches 
in  summer,  so  that  the  sun  can  shine  between  them,  and  arresting 
the  roots  if  growth  becomes  exuberant.  It  is  easy  to  change  small, 
pointed  leaf  or  wood  buds  into  bold,  oval-shaped  blossom  buds ; 
a  far  more  difficult,  if  not  impossible  task,  to  effect  a  change  the 
other  way  about,  and  make  stunted  trees,  which  produce  nothing  but 
blossom,  and  the  attendant  whorls  of  leaves,  healthy  growers  and 
prolonged  bearers  of  first-class  fruit. 
A  welcome  change  in  the  weather  occurred  on  Tuesday,  and  if 
milder  weather  follow  the  refreshing  rain  that  was  so  greatly  needed, 
fruit  prospects  will  be  materially  improved. 
