Instructions in gardening for ladies

by Mrs. Loudon

The Wall-Fruit Tree.—There are two things on which the welfare of wall-fruit trees materially depends, viz. the construction of the wall, and that of the border. The walls of kitchen gardens are very generally made too high: a serious fault in many respects, but particularly in impeding the free passage of the sun and air to the fruit. It has indeed been found, by experience, that walls about eight feet high, will produce better fruit than walls of ten feet or twelve feet, which is the general height; and besides they have the advantage of not throwing so deep a shadow over the garden. Of whatever height the walls may be, they should always be in straight lines; as the various expedients which have been from time to time adopted, of curved or zigzag lines, have been found not to answer in practice, but to produce eddies and currents of wind exceedingly injurious to the fruit. The garden wall should have a slight stone coping; and where the trees are likely to want protection, strong hooks, or holdfasts, projecting from the wall, should be built in at regular distances for the convenience of suspending the mats or bunting that may be employed; or supporting a deep wooden coping. Hot or flued walls are not desirable, as they are very expensive and troublesome, and of very little use.

The walls should be built on good, sound, and deep foundations, but on no account on arches; as it is of importance to the gardener to confine the roots to the border in front of the wall, which is under his control, instead of suffering them to spread through the arches to the other sides, where they are entirely removed from him.

The essential point to be attended to in the construction of a fruit border is that the soil shall not be more than eighteen inches deep on a hard bottom. If the subsoil be hard gravel or rock, covered with mould to the depth mentioned, nothing more can be desired; but if the subsoil be wet clay, or sand over gravel, or in short anything that will allow of roots penetrating into it, artificial means should be resorted to, to keep the roots near the surface of the ground. The most common method of forming a border is to excavate the ground to the depth required, and to pave the bottom of the excavation with large stones or pebbles; but bricks, cement, asphalt, or in short any other substance may be employed which appears likely to attain the end in view—taking care, however, to provide effectual drainage, as otherwise the chamber, as it is called, would become a reservoir of stagnant water, exceedingly injurious to the plants. The chamber having been formed, it should be covered with good rich garden mould to the requisite depth, varying in some instances according to the kind of tree to be grown in it; but in all cases thoroughly pulverized, so as to offer no obstruction to the passage of the roots.

When the trees are planted care should be taken to raise each on a little hillock, at the point of junction between the trunk and the root, to allow for the sinking of the ground. The collar of a ligneous plant should never be buried; as any moisture collected round this tender and indeed vital part, brings on canker, and innumerable other diseases. All fruit-trees thus treated produce cankered and deformed fruit, and die in a few years of premature old age.

It can never be repeated too often that the essential point in growing fruit-trees is to keep their roots as near to the surface as possible, and never to suffer them to descend so deep as to be out of the influence of the sun and air. Many persons unacquainted with vegetable physiology, have an idea that when a fruit-tree, which has been productive, suddenly ceases to bear, it is because its roots have reached the gravel, or in other words, the subsoil. This is, however, false reasoning on true premises. It is quite true that the tree has ceased to bear in consequence of the descent of its roots; but the reason this descent is injurious is, that the ground far below the surface is cold, and frequently impregnated with stagnant water; and either that the roots thus become swollen and unable to perform their proper functions, in which case the leaves turn yellow, and the tree appears to wither, or that they supply the tree with an abundance of poor thin watery sap quite unsuitable for the production of fruit. On the contrary, when the roots are kept near the surface, though they have no air-vessels except in the spongioles, these spongioles imbibe air and carbonic acid gas from the atmosphere with all the moisture they take up; and thus the vessels are not only kept in a healthy state by not being overcharged with water without air, but the sap is so thickened and enriched with the carbonic acid gas, that it is brought into a proper state for forming those deposits which lead to the production of fruit.

The use of walls is to afford tender plants the heat necessary to mature their fruit, by reflecting the sun’s rays back upon it; and by giving out to the fruit during the night the heat they have absorbed during the day. They are also useful in sheltering the plant from cold winds; and in preventing the branches from bruising each other in violent storms. This being the use of walls, it is evident that only those trees should be trained against them that require protection; and the south and south-east walls being warmer than the others, it is equally evident that only those trees should be trained against these walls, that require a great deal of heat to mature their fruits. There are some fruits, such as the apple, which too much heat renders mealy and insipid; and these would obviously be injured instead of improved by a south, or south-east wall; while other fruits, such as the peach, could not produce good fruit in our climate without one. Before planting trees against the walls of a garden, it will thus be necessary to select the trees proper for each wall; and as some of the finer kinds will be several years before they attain a sufficient size to fill up the places assigned to them, trees of inferior kinds may be planted between them, so that no part of the wall may be lost—the inferior trees being cut in as the others grow, and being finally removed. This is accomplished by planting alternately dwarf trees of the kind which is to remain, and trees grafted standard high, which are called riders, of the kinds which are to be removed. The distance at which the permanent trees ought to be planted depends upon the nature of the tree.

There is, however, one objection to a south or south-east wall for tender plants which should be carefully guarded against. This is the danger from spring frosts, to which the blossoms are exposed during the night, from being brought prematurely forward during the day. To guard against this, the south wall should have a deep wooden coping, supported by holdfasts, projecting about a foot from the wall; and under this coping there should be a row of hooks, on which should be hung a kind of curtain of bunting, which should be kept on day and night in frosty weather, while the blossoms are expanded. This is not only to protect the blossoms from the frost, but to save them from the withering effect of the sun, which is as injurious to them after a frosty night as the frost itself. In fact, when tender trees are covered with hoar-frost, they may sometimes be saved if shaded till they have thawed; but they are always killed if exposed, while the frost is on them, to the sun. Bunting is preferable to matting or canvass; because it is thinner and does not entirely exclude the light and air, because it is more easily put up and taken down, and takes up less room when stowed away, and because it is cheaper, four square yards costing only two shillings at Edgington’s, the marquee-maker.

Kinds of Wall-Fruit Trees, &c.—The principal fruits grown against a wall in England are those containing stones; and of these the most valuable are the peach, the nectarine, and the apricot. The other stone fruits, such as the plum and the cherry, are frequently grown against a wall, but they are grown also as standards: as are the kernel fruits, such as the apple and pear; the apple being very rarely grown against a wall in England. In the neighbourhood of London, figs and grapes are grown against walls in the open ground, and in some parts of Devonshire the orange tribe.

Stone Fruits.—All kinds of stone fruits are more or less delicate at the time of forming their stones, or “stoning” as it is called; and the fruit requires thinning at that period to prevent the greater part of it being dropped. They all blossom early, and are delicate while their flowers are expanded. For these reasons their crops are more uncertain in a variable climate like that of England, than crops of the kernel fruits, and require more care and attention to bring them to perfection.

Peaches and Nectarines.—The peach and the nectarine are only varieties of one species of almond; and instances have been known of peaches and nectarines growing on the same tree without grafting. Both peaches and nectarines are divided into two kinds; the free stones, the flesh of which parts readily from the stone—and the cling stones, the flesh of which adheres to the stone. Some of the best peaches for a small garden are the Grosse mignonne, Bellegarde, and Barrington. The earliest peach is the red nutmeg, which ripens in July; and one of the latest, the Catherine, which does not ripen till October. The best nectarines are the Elruge and the Violette hative, with the new white nectarine, for a variety in colour. Both peaches and nectarines are budded on plum stocks, or on seedling peaches, or almonds, the latter being greatly preferred by the French nurserymen. The best soil for peaches is about three parts of fresh clayey loam, taken from some field, and one part of drift sand. This soil should be moderately enriched with vegetable mould composed of decayed leaves, and it should be laid on the prepared chamber to the depth of about eighteen inches, rather less than more. Peaches require rather an adhesive soil, not too rich; as in a rich loose soil they will produce wood rather than fruit. Peach trees are seldom planted against the wall where they are to remain, till they have been two, three, or four years trained; and they are generally removed at the latter end of October, or beginning of November, just as the leaf begins to fall. They are best trained in the fan manner; and as they always bear their fruit on shoots of a year old, these shoots must always be left on in pruning, and the old wood cut out. Pruning should be performed at two seasons, viz. winter and summer: the winter pruning is performed at the fall of the leaf, or in the beginning of February, and consists of cutting out or shortening the old wood or barren branches; and summer pruning, which consists chiefly of what is called disbudding, (that is, rubbing off the buds as soon as they appear,) should be applied to the removal of all shoots growing right out from the wall, (and which, consequently, could not be well trained,) or which appear otherwise to be improperly placed. Experienced gardeners also look over the blossom buds, as soon as they show themselves, and thin them out, without allowing the tree to waste its strength in forming fruit which it can never ripen, and which is of no use in its green state. The disbudding is easily performed; and watching the trees to find when it will be necessary, affords a constant source of interest. Thinning the blossoms is rather more difficult; but with a little practice, a lady could do it much better than a gardener, as it is an operation that depends principally on delicacy of touch. When a peach tree is trained in the fan manner, the first year the little side shoots are left for producing the fruit, and none of these should be more than a year old. The next year these shoots must be cut out, (as the same shoot never bears two years in succession,) and others which have been produced while they were bearing, must be trained in their stead. The borders should never be cropped on account of not disturbing the roots, which should be encouraged to rise up to the surface of the ground by what is called mulching, that is, covering the ground with straw, dead leaves, or litter; and when this is objected to on account of its untidy appearance, the borders should be left bare, and only raked occasionally to prevent the surface from caking over, and becoming impervious to air and moisture. No stable dung should be given to peaches, and when the trees seem exhausted they should be taken up and replanted in fresh soil; or they should be removed, and trees of quite a different kind, such as pears for example, planted instead of them in the same soil. When the borders cannot be spared to be left entirely bare, a light crop, such as of spinach, lettuces, mustard and cress, or parsley, should be sown on them, and the remains of this crop, when done with, should be raked off; but fruit borders should never on any account be touched with a spade, and even a fork should be used very seldom and very sparingly; never, indeed, unless the ground has become too hard and compact to admit the rain, the sun, and the air. It must never be forgotten, that unless the spongioles of the roots are permitted to imbibe the carbonic acid gas always floating in the atmosphere, with the moisture they take up, the sap of the tree will never be rich enough to produce fruit. The fruit and seeds of every plant are in fact concentrations of carbon, precipitated by the action of light; and where any plant is deficient in carbon, or deprived of light, it cannot produce much fruit. The culture of the nectarine is exactly the same as that of the peach. In both, when the season is cold and wet, with but little sun, some cultivators remove a few of the leaves to admit more air and light to the fruit; but this should be done very sparingly, as unless a sufficient quantity of leaves are left to carry on the proper circulation of the sap, the skin of the fruit will become tough and withered, and the flesh insipid. When the fruit is ripe, it is customary, in large gardens, to suspend a net under the branches to catch any fruit that may fall, and thus to save it from being bruised. The peach is supposed to be a native of Persia, and to have been introduced into England about the middle of the sixteenth century. Peaches and nectarines on a wall ten or twelve feet high, should be planted about twenty feet apart; with riders of some kind of plum, or peach, till the permanent trees spread.