TRAINING FRUIT-TREES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, 25 October 1845, Page 136

TRAINING FRUIT-TREES.

[From the Gardeners' Gazette.] As walls are built, and various descriptions of trelliage are erected for supporting, protecting, and bringing to perfection the various cultivated fruits in gardens ; and as the different methods of pruning and training trees have a considerable effect on their growth and fertility, it is necessary that the various modes should be described, together with the effects of mere position on the branches, which are fixed in one way or other, as the trainer deems best. When foreign fruits were introduced into British gardens, it was soon found that they not only required shelter from the north winds, but also all the advantage that could be gained from the reflected light and heat of the sun. And as walls were at once the best reflectors of heat and light, as well as the best defences for a garden, they were soon found to be the most suitable stations for the tender natives of Pales* tine and Persia. Training trees on the walls of a house is a very ancient custom among the Jews ; so that employing the fences of a garden with a similar view was a very natural expedient. Hence all the most tender and highly-valued fruits were called wall fruit ; and the planting, pruning, and training of such trees upon the face of a wall became a very principal part of a gardener's business. In the execution of this mode of management, it was soon discovered that, as the branched head of a tree, instead of being allowed to take its natural rotund form by branches spreading in all directions around, it was compelled to advance on a superficial plane in three directions only ; and consequently, in its annual growth, was ever tending to depart from its artificial confinement by a yearly production of breast' wood, requiring the guiding and correcting hand of the pruner. It was also observed that the growth of the branches was very unequal ; those trained directly upright were much more vigorous than such as were led obliquely upward, or horizontally. Hence it was evident that the naturally tendency of every leading shoot was to gain a greater share of light, or that the current of the sap was more impetuous in right lines than in those that were otherwise. But another circumstance was observed, viz., that the erect and direct branches were less fruitful than those that were retorted or crooked. On a knowledge of these circumstances, all the arts of pruning and training wall, trellis, or espalier fruit-trees are founded, and, unless carefully attended to in the seasonal management, no great success can be expected. The principle of training is to combine symmetry with fruitfulness ; to keep the tree within the bounds which its natural habit, or the situation in which it is placed, requires ; that it fill the space intended for it, not by prompting it into over-vigorous growth, by giving it too rich a soil, or by immoderate pruning, but by the repressive means of judicious disbudding, or by the style of training to which it may be subjected. One of the most common modes is that called fan-training. In this there is no principal upright stem, but a competent number of branches are trained like diverging rays from the root : the extremities becoming gradually horizontal in position. In this method, the current of the sap being divided into many channels, the motion is considerably retarded, and fruitfulness induced. Fan-training, besides being beautifully symmetrical, is also most natural in appearance; and can most easily be kept so, by reason of there ever being a succession of young branches rising from below to fill up vacancies caused by accident, or by removal of worn-out leaders. Although generally adopted for all kinds of fruit-trees, it has been objected to because of the branches being too closely connected with the roots : the sap ejected from these into the bearing wood is supposed to be too crude for giving flavour to the fruit, owing to the very short portion of stem through which it has to percolate ; it being constantly found that the further the sap is from the roots, when drawn out of a tree, the richer it is, the juices being reasonably supposed to be better elaborated in a lengthened course. It is on this account that almost all orchard and wall trees are advised to be either riders or half-riders, otherwise called half-standards. The first have tall stems, with a branched head trained on the upper part of the wall above the dwarftrees. The second have stems that reach halfway up the wall, and their branches are trained in all directions around from the summit of the stem; thus answering the purposes of both riders and dwarfs. Riders or standards, and half-standards, are sooner fruitful than dwarftrees, and hence they are preferred for planting in new gardens. This earlier fertility can only be attributed to the distance the bearing branches are from the roots ; the length of stem operating as a check to the vigour of the tree. So much has the division, the lengthening of the stem, and curvature of the leading branches, been considered as an absolutely necessary and effectual means for at once moderating the growth, and inducing fruitfulness, that some very whimsical modes of training have been recommended. When it happens, as it too often doei, that wall-fruit trees are planted in too rich and deep a soil, some artificial means must be used with a view of moderating the growth. One of those means is training the stem and

branches of a tree into very fantastic and tortuous forms'.' < Sometimes the stem is trained sigzagly upward, with lateral branches fifteen inches apart, laid in, and extending horizontally. In some instances shoots from these laterals are trained erect at foot-distances : in other cases the shoots are led forwards. This mode of training — that is, with one or two upright stems, whence branches are led to the right and left, and carried out to any distance — is very commonly practised for pears on walls or espaliers. It is a very neat method of training, but seldom profitable, as the branches are frequently barren and bear no fruit, except a few at the extremities. This is a great defect, and by no means creditable to the manager; for he had better have an ugly irregular tree, than a barren ornamental one.

There are many modifications of the horizontal style of training, and either with or without a central stem ; they are all practised, however, as a means of checking luxuriant growth. For low walls, or as espaliers, this method of training is particularly eligible ; because lateral extent is more an object than upright growth. Training with an open centre, with the branches curving upwards and then horizontally, is a common custom in France, and answers well, provided the strong buds about the middle of the tree be constantly rubbed off. A. rider, with drooping branches, either on a wall or in the open ground, very soon becomes fertile, merely from position ; and sometimes, if the branches of a tree planted on the north side of a wall be trained over the top and down the southward face, it rarely fails to bear plentifully. Fruit-trees trained as espaliers form profitable boundaries to the quarters of a kitchen-garden; they shade the ground but little, and, when neatly managed, are rather ornamental than otherwise. Espaliers, however, are not now so fashionable as they were formerly. Two, if not three, French fashions have been partially introduced into this country of late years, which have taken the place of espalier-rails. The first is what is called the " bush " form. A circle of stakes is fixed round the young tree, and the branches are trained spirally round the outside of them, forming a cylinder of branches five or six feet high. The advantages of this mode of training is having a good many long branches in a small compass, and keeping the fruit secure from the winds.

Another French method of training pear-trees is called the " distaff-shape. A young tree is allowed to form a principal and central stem, which, being occasionally stopped in its erect growth, is furnished with numerous side branches, which, according as they extend, are tied with strings to the lower part of the stem, so that they may take a hanging position, and collectively form a cone of fruitful spray around the stem. A rank of healthy trees, trained in this style, must look well in any garden ; and in this country, on suitable soils, might succeed very well. Another substitute for espaliers are rows of dwarf- trees, trained like low bushes, as currant-trees are. If the most dwarf sorts of each kind be chosen, and if they can be kept in a stunted state without much knife-work, they are at once profitable as well as ornamental. But in gardens of strong, rich loam, it need never be attempted to grow dwarfed fruit-trees in any of these curious bush-like forms ; as the constant struggle between the local vigour of the trees, and the endeavours of the manager to keep them within compass by violent means, will soon render them very unsightly and barren stumps. From what has been observed above, it is sufficiently obvious that the mode of training a fruit-tree will either accelerate or depress the growth; and as moderate development is favourable, and vigorous luxuriance unfavourable, to the production of the flowers and fruit, the trainer possesses the power of rendering his trees moderate growers on rich ground, and stronger growers on that which is poor and thin ; and this merely by elevating or depressing the position of the branches. This is not a new idea, as many of our popular forms of trained trees evince. Even the grape-vine, the most obedient and manageable of all others, has been recommended to be trained down the rafters of houses instead of upwards from the front of the house ; and in the open air it has been advised to train the principal stem of a vine erectly upwards, and stopping it under the coping of the wall, and in the next year training the two topmost shoots right and left along under the coping, whence shoots are on succeeding years trained downwards even to the bottom of the wall, which are commonly eminently fruitful.