PRUNING PEACHES AND NECTARINES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1435, 13 September 1861, Page 4

PRUNING PEACHES AND NECTARINES.

Too much is doiie with the knife and too little with the thumb and finger, in managing these as well as many other fruit tiees It is consideied a very clever thing by many fast gardeners to use the knife fieely, and well thin out their wall tiees. Now, having suffeied many years by allowing my gardener too much license with Saynor, I cannot do less than caution my fellow-sufferers in this way (and I know we are a numerous class) not to allow their gardeners a knife at all, except it be to prune Gooseberry bushes. In fact, I wish the Chancellor of the Exchequer would put a tax upon pruning knifes ; it would yield a good sum t« the levenue, and save hundreds of Peach tiees every ,year. The way I found out that the knife had caused all the evih my trees had been subject to for the last 14 years (during which time two series of tiees had been "used up," anda thiid set were going in the same direction), was this —My gardener left me two years ago, and wishing to bring a shaip young fellow who had woiked with him for some time into his place, I took to the management of my wall tiees jrro ton , and being a subscriber to the " Florist," took lessons from your back numbers, wheiein thumb piuning is strongly insisted on ; and strictly following the plan laid down, I shoitly discarded the kitife altogether. I began my work in April, 1859. My principal peach trees were then four years old, and were already getting naked in the centre and lower part of the tree, owing, as 1 soon found, to the buds not wanted for wood having been cut away with the knife, by which practice, in two or three yeais, the lower parts of the main branches were left without young wood on them, and what was still worse, without the power of forming even adventitious buds. My plan is to cut nothing away ; eveiy bud is allowed to grow a few joints in length, when I pinch out the point, leaving two or three leaves at the base, which includes as many joints. Those intended tor filling up aie selected and laid in when giown sufficiently long, but I am more sparing of this wood than many, depending on my spuis. The shoots pinched back may again push during the summer, when they are again closely stopped and result in fruit spurs, which have alf.o generally latent wood buds at their base, which prevents the wood ever becoming naked and unproductive, which it otherwise would. By this simple method, my trees are now coveied with short spurs and small wood in place of the long coaiso shoots which used to run up to the top of the wall in a season, and naked wood is now impossible. My tiees have escaped this severe winter without suffering any bad effects that I can see, wheieas my neighbors all tell me the wood ot their trees is blackened or dead My spurs ripen sooner than the wood on longer shoots, as they become brown and loose their leaves earlier, hence the superiority of the p!an in seasons like the last. My man is now getting into his work, and I shall in some measure placo the trees in his caie this season, allowing him no knifo, except to shoiten back a few long shoots when they have faiily broken ! Yes ' gardeners must learn to dispense with the knife in ti cc management, just as wo have done with the lancet in our medical practice. A.M.R.G.S., in Turner's and Spencer's Ffonstfar April.