When replacing most of the soil, mix in with it two 6-inch potfuls of mortar rubble, and if this is not available use one 6-inch potful of crushed chalk.

Planting can be done any time in the winter, but it is best to plant the moment all the leaves have fallen in November. I plant trees as two-year-olds; that is, two years from layering, for he invariably propagated his trees that way though they will strike quite well from cuttings.

Frequent failures of figs in Great Britain is due (a) to cold winters and (b) to lack of sunshine, with the result that the wood does not mature sufficiently well. The roots must always be restricted so as to aim at the minimum amount of new wood formation. The fruit is largely produced on laterals, and vertical shoots are less productive than horizontal ones. The fruit is produced on the current year’s growth and at the tips are the tiny immature fruits which do not develop in the same year but stay as ‘fruit buds’ swelling out into fruit the following summer. Figs are grown on their own roots. I never feeds my figs for it is tremendously important not to encourage rank growth.

The great thing is to get the tree to produce hard, well-ripened wood. Some gardeners in the south-west of England do give their figs cesspool water in the summer, for though figs appreciate dry growing weather that goes with a drought, they do seem to appreciate water at that time and maybe, therefore, the cesspool water my friend gives in a droughty season does good from the point of view of moisture and not so much from the point of view of the plant foods.

In addition to the cutting out of whole branches, from the point of view of rejuvenatioo, it is necessary if figs grow too strongly to root-prune. So every Year, taking the trunk as a centre, a half-circle must be scribed with a 5-foot radius, and along that half-circle a sharp spade must be plunged about 18 inches deep so as to cut off any roots which may have escaped out of the asbestos ‘box’ provided.

If one is to succeed with sour cherry pruning, it does mean that the pruning must be fairly ruthless after the first six years. After ten years there is usually a fair amount of dead wood to cut out owing to the Brown Rot Disease. It is better not to grass down sour cherries but to grow them on cultivated land which is properly mulched, so that the roots need not be disturbed by cultivation.