The Book of Pears and Plums; With Chapters on Cherries and MulberriesBartrum, Edward
History
The Book of Pears and Plums; With Chapters on Cherries and Mulberries
Bartrum, Edward
Fruit-culture; Pears; Plum
With skill and care pears may be successfully grown in an unheated
orchard house. They may have apples for their companions, but not
cherries, peaches, plums or apricots. The most convenient house is a
span-roof from 20 to 24 feet wide, 10 to 12 feet high to the ridge of
the roof, and 4-½ to 6 feet at the sides. Ventilators should run round
the sides 18 inches wide, and hinged at bottom; the top ventilators
should be 3 feet wide by 15 inches, 7-½ feet apart, on alternate sides
of the ridge (Mr T. Somers Rivers, in _Royal Horticultural Journal_,
vol. xxv., parts i., ii.). A good length for this breadth is 50 to 60
feet. A half-inch wire protection over the ventilators and an inner
wired door may be as necessary (as a protection against birds), as it is
for cherries. There should be a path made hard with clay and gravel
through the centre. Some advise a concrete floor; others prefer to
plunge their pots inside as well as out. A lean-to house from 6 to 9
feet wide against a south wall may be of great service. Cordons can be
grown on the wall, or planted outside and trained indoors, like vines,
near the glass. Trees in pots can also be placed there. With either
house, some ground to which the trees in pots can be removed when all
danger from frost is over is required. It should be warm and well
sheltered. Maiden plants may be put into 8 or 10-inch pots in September,
and cut back later on, but time is saved by purchasing older trees of
nurserymen; 15 to 18-inch pots will be needed in a few years. If there
is a concrete floor, the pots must be raised on bricks, that surplus
water may pass off. If the pots are plunged, care must be taken that the
water can run away. In June take them into the open air, plunge them in
the ground within three inches of the rim, to keep them warm and moist,
and to protect the trees from the wind. After the fruit is gathered,
the trees should as a rule be repotted. Prepare a fresh pot with broken
flints, etc., at the bottom, place a piece of turf on them, next a
handful of soot, and some fine soil on that. Have ready some new soil
made chiefly of good turfy loam, to which old mortar rubbish or road
scrapings, wood ashes, guano, and bone-dust have previously been added.
The whole should be well mixed. Then take the tree out with a ball of
earth, remove the soil all round the ball with a pointed stick, shorten
the rootlets around, and cut any coarse roots away with sharp pruning
scissors. Place the topmost roots an inch and a half below the rim, then
shake this compost among the roots, finally ramming the soil hard down
into the pot. In two or three days soak the ball with rain or warm
water. The trees are better in the house until re-established. Sprinkle
the leaves daily with soft water. Close and keep the house moist. The
pots can then be taken out and plunged once more. The house will
probably be wanted. They must be carefully protected in severe weather;
place ashes, earth, or manure around them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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