Winter Meeting. 163 



'i5 



A line of reasoning and work that holds good one year may not be 

 entirely right i^r another, ^\^e can only do the best we can to fit the cir- 

 cumstances ; to stand still and do nothing will not do. Some one has 

 said that "pruning is a process of thinning." I think it well expressed, 

 for it appears to be a way we have of partly correcting the error we make 

 in setting the trees too closely together. It seems that when a limb and 

 its foliage become shaded that it fails to bear good fruit, and finally dies 

 if it is not cut off before. Again when the whole area of ground is cov- 

 ered with trees and the branches are very thick there is not enough sun- 

 light and plant food on area allotted to each tree. Therefore the tree 

 must be mutilated more, so that there is not too much hungry plant there 

 to feed. 



Pruning too heavily produces as bad effects at times as does i)runing 

 too little. Just the right medium is hard to find. 



To set further apart and prune less is my ideal way now, but less 

 pruning cannot be carried out with trees set too closely. 



Pruning should be done to correct unbalanced or ill-shapen trees 

 sometimes caused by the prevailing winds. Trees out of balance must 

 be corrected as soon as observed or wait until the next dormant season, 

 which time we believe to be the best for this work. 



The lower branches must be kept up out of the way so that cultiva- 

 tion may be continued until late in the season. These lower limbs that 

 get in the way of our process of cultivation are the ones that most often 

 drop back in vigor of growth and also produce the poorest quality of 

 fruit. They are the ones that nature usually lets die first. Branches that 

 rub each other must be cut out, also those branches that are over crowded, 

 together with those commonly called water sprouts that may come 

 out in undesirable places. The great accumulation of small limbs 

 with foliage inside the tree should be taken out. 



It is sometimes said that an old orchard outlives its usefulness. Its 

 branches die but it continues to live and grow wood. The top branches 

 are in the light and sunshine and live, the lower ones are shaded and die. 

 The tree grows taller, producing more wood each year. In fact all energy 

 is expended in growing more wood to reach more sunshine. While it's 

 neighbor trees are doing likewise. To do this each tree has absorbed all 

 the plant food and moisture allotted to it. 



Sometimes an old tree gets its extremities very thickly covered by 

 small and sprangled twigs that furnish a very great over-abundance of 

 fruit buds, blooms and fruit. We have practiced cutting out with clip- 

 pers small and interlacing branches, thereby thinning the tree of a great 

 number of its terminal twigs, in that way lessening the amount of fruit 

 *o be pulled off. 



