File:The American garden (1891) (18144805452).jpg

Title: The American garden
Identifier: americangarden121891broo (find matches)
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors:
Subjects: Horticulture; Gardening
Publisher: Brooklyn, N. Y. : (s. n. )
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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THE ECONOMIC PLANTS OF JAPAN. II prefecture, where it is said that the best pears in Japan are grown. So also in Shiwosa, a district in the penin- sula east of Tokio, and other places. There are two features of interest in connection with the culture of these pears. One is that for stocks they use quite generally a kind of wild pear which strikes root readily from cuttings, so that this is quite the ordinary method of propagation. I suspect that it is the wild form of the species ; but I am not certain of it, as I have been able to see only very small trees. The gardeners and early in spring, they soon develop roots and top, and of- ten make respectable trees at the end of the first year. These are sometimes planted in the orchard without grafting, and sometimes grafted with other sorts. The other feature which strikes a foreigner as pecul- iar is their method of training. The Japanese pear grower almost invariably trains his trees on a horizontal trellis made of bamboo poles, and erected about five and a half or six feet from the ground. The trees are plant- ed at varying distances, but usually about twelve feet
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Fi.3. 5. J.\p.\xESE Pe.\r—MiNo OR Okago. Natur.-\l Size. (See page 10. nurserymen to whom I went for information invariably told me that it was the " Yama-nashi," that is, wild pear or mountain pear. The stocks I saw growing had thin- ner, narrower and more deeply and irregularly serrate leaves than the cultivated forms. But several of the latter, if not all of them, also take root readily from cut- tings, aqd are often used for stocks. For this purpose they use branches three-fourths to one inch in diameter, cut in lengths of about two feet. Stuck in the ground apart each way, and made to form a whorl of leading branches at a height of four to five feet. As soon as they reach above the trellis they are bent down and se- cured to the poles, and thereafter pruned with a care and system which rival the art of the masters in espalier training of the West. The growers advance many reasons for their adher- ence to this system. They claim that the trees yield more and larger fruit than free-standing trees would—a

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