GARDENING NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 137, 11 June 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

GARDENING NOTES.

Work for the Week* pruningTsurubs. [By Aqricola.J There are two or three elementary rules which nro to be observed when the production of flowers is primarily desired. Shrubs which bloHHom early in the Spring form their flower- buds the year before, and ingeniously protect them during the Winter with a warm covering, so that they are ready to open with the early days of Spring- sunshine. Anyone who will cut off the twig of a peach-tree in the Winter, or of an, earlyflowering Spiweti, and put it in wator, will understand this, for the flowers will expand in a fow days after it has been brought into a warm room. Obviously, if the branches of huch shrubs are out hard baok in Autumn, all the flower-buds are out away, and there is no bloom in the Spring 1 . If, however, the branches are cut back immediately after the flowering season is over, rhis will encourage the growth of new shoota from buds near the base of the branch, and these will grow rapidly to take the place of the part that has been lost, and cover themselves with flower-buds for another year. Another olass of shrubs, like the Hydraufeas, Aethceas, and certain others which ower in late Summer or Autumn from buds which have developed on the wood grown during tho current summer, should be pruned in late Autumn after flowering, or, at least, before the wood starts in the t-pring, so as to encourage abundant Summer growth and flower- buds for the next Autumn. But thei'e are the simplest elementary ruled, and relate solely to the production of flowors. Shrubs are useful for many other purposes than merely to display their blossoms. They are beautiful all the year round. Even in the Winter the variously coloured barks of many of them add a singular charm to the laudscapo. We therefore prune them not only to promote the pi-oductiou of flowers, but of wood, and foliage, and fruit as well, to ensure grtce or symmetry of outline, and to make them vigorous and healthy. The simple cutting-iu of flowering wood in Spring or Fall is thus a small part of the art of pruniug, and where there is a large variety of shrubs there is no time of year when something in this direction cannot be done, aud it is especially useful when it is oontiuued throughout th« pntire growing season. If surplus wood is to be removed, a clean cut in mid-summer will heal over inuqh more readily than it will in cold weather, aud there is no better time for removing superfluous branches, or for shortening -iu over- vigorous shoots which iuterfctoj with the symmetry of a speoiinnn. Some trees and shrubs whose brunches bleed when cut in the Spring will heal over quickly if pruned white in full leaf. If the string branches are pinched back in summer, the wood will ripen into such a sound condition for withstanding cold that trees naturally teuder have been found to endure even a severe Winter fairly well when their biauohes ! had been properly stopped. This Summer pinching in especially useful in wet seasons, when otherwise the wood keeps growing late iti autumn and is caught tiy frosty weather in a soft and sappy condition. It aluo discourages upward growth where this is undesirable, and teuda to develop fruitI buds, 60 that shrubs and tree's will bear fruit ut an earlier age when they are properly pinched back. For the same reason shrubs will ripen their fruit more perfectly when tho stronger shoots above it have boen stopped. Just how much to cut is a matter to be learned by experience. Sometimes tho best way to renovate a shrubbery is to cut many of the plants to the ground and let them start anew. In others a vory severe pruuin/ is often advisable. If every annual shoot ol the large-panioled Hydrangea (H paniculata grandiflora) is cut back in Autumn or early Spring to a couple of tyes the growth next year will be very vigorous, and even after the new shoots start, if all the weaker onea are rubbed out, enougt will remain, each one carrying an imuienne flower-head at its extremity to completely cover tfye shrub with bloom. But it should not be forgotten that too muoh pruning weakens plants. Everyone has observed how abundantly the foliage starts cut from the stump of an amputated branch of the nipple, for example, but this is not a proof of increased vigour. In reality it is a signal of distress, and showy that th<3 tree has aroused itself to au extra effort to supply the places of the organs of nutrition of which it had been robbed. A young plant, oarefully pruned when it is set out in good ground, with room enough to grow in, will sometimes need as it grows to have inferior branches out away for the admission of light and air, and thu over- strong shoots pinched back in midsummer, and dead wood oarefully removed. Little more will be required, as a rule, except to shorten in judiciously the flowering wood after bloom, and under this treatment shrubs will develop into their best foim, and flower abundantly year after yeur.