To disbud. Disbudding is the art of removing the surplus buds from a tree with economy and skill in order to shape the tree and contribute to its health and fecundity.

Disbudding also frees the tree of obfuscating branches, thereby enabling it to bear finer fruit and be more long-lived.

La Quintinie recommends that bushes be disbudded in the same manner as espaliers and contre-espaliers. [1]

Trees should not be disbudded until the young shoots have grown to about a foot in order to allow the trees to burn themselves out, so to speak, and divert the sap: without this precaution, disbudding would be harmful to trees.

Buds should be cut close to the bark with a pruning knife: this operation should therefore go hand in hand with pruning. Those who break off the buds by hand leave small splinters and inflict uneven wounds all over the tree, causing gumming in stone-fruit trees which leads to their certain destruction.

Disbudding should always be accompanied by training: only poor gardeners proceed otherwise. Everything which grows to the front or back of a tree should be deshooted in order to encourage lateral growth. Slender shoots and branches of ‘false’ wood are among those which should be removed, unless a small number are left in order to embellish the tree. [2]

If one were to estimate how many branches are lopped from a tree by pruning or disbudding and by deshooting the new branches growing at the front or back, one would see that at least three quarters of them are removed. If in addition to this remarkable lopping one were to remove the tip of each shoot, it would be impossible for the shoots to grow. By this means, they are frequently stunted or at least rendered unproductive.

When deshooting the front and back branches of a tree, which constitute half of the total number of branches, it is therefore necessary to compensate the tree by allowing it to grow its lateral branches to their full length, stretching them out according to the strength of the tree.

Thus spared, these shoots spread out and bear a hundred times more fruit than they would normally produce. [3]

When one deprives sap of the vessels and receptacles which are the instruments of its energy and working, it is no longer able to flow, and the tree becomes starved and perishes.

By allowing the side shoots to lengthen, the tree is compensated in part for the deshooting of its front and back branches.

Vines should be disbudded, but here disbudding assumes a different meaning: vines are disbudded not only when the surplus buds are removed but also when the laterals are pinched and when the tendrils which usually grow at each node next to the buds are broken off, starting at the bottom.

Notes

1. In La Quintinie, 1690. See also article Contre-espalier.

2. See article Branches.

3. This paragraph comes before the preceding one in the original text, where it is out of sequence. It has consequently been reordered.