GROWTH OF STONE-FRUIT TREES.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2116, 4 December 1880, Page 3

GROWTH OF STONE-FRUIT TREES.

[From the "Field.”] It is curious to observe how some people, with nothing to hinder them from knowing better, persist in arguing upon mere assumptions, and offering advice to their less exEerienced neighbors on the same grounds. I avo mot with the statement over and over again, and had it dinned into my ears as well, that, in order to have a tree of any kind of atone fruit well furnished with bearing wood from the bottom, shortening of the shoots from the beginning is indispensable. Only the other week wo find a gardener, of professedly long experience on the subject, cautioning amateurs on this head in the most earnest manner. Now, apart altogether from the question of pruning, it should be known tha* shortening the annual shoots of stone fruits scarcely at all affects the breaking of the buds. A shoot sft long will break just as regularly and freely as one that has been shortened back to Ift or lese. Probably the buds left will push more grossly, in consequence of the sap being diverted into them alone, but that is seldom an advantage—rather otherwise. Another thing is, that on a long unpruned shoot tbs last bud at the base is often the strongest; the strong succulent g-owths, “gluttons,” are usually back-breaks om the older wood. The peach must not be regarded in the same light as the vine, which is disposed to break most strongly at extremities of the branches, as many plants of a similar description are ; but both in habit and structure the vine is quite different from a stone fruit, to which the same rules do not apply in pruning. Forming a well and evenly furnished peach tree, for example, does not so much depend upon pruning as forethought in disbudding. I admit that many trees are partly lost at the Bottom for want of young wood, and that it becomes difficult in very aged trees to keep the old limbs thoroughly well clothed with young bearing wood; but the deficiency oftener arises from mismanagement than anything else. In disbudding, more than sufficient young growths should be left about the bottom of the tree ; and if these cannot all be laid in, they can be pinched and kept short daring the season, in the event of it being needful to origina l e fresh branches the following year or any time afterwards. But, as a rule, if only the proper shoots are left in their right places every year, they will provide successional shoots when and where they are wanted.