STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 6 1 



There are some who advise: "Don't touch a tree with a 

 knife any more than is necessary to let in the sun." This does 

 not work with me; I have tried it. If you allow young trees 

 in Virginia to make their natural growth, without cutting them 

 back the first two years, or three, after planting, they become 

 sprawling and straggly ; the first heavy crop of fruit bends 

 them down to the ground and splits ofif the limbs. We are 

 obliged to cut back the trees heavily the first few years in order 

 to strengthen and thicken the trunk and form the head. After 

 the third year the less pruning the better, so only the top is 

 kept open. 



Summer pruning, we believe in Virginia, is a special practice 

 for special conditions. This is another illustration of the dan- 

 ger of importing bodily methods that have been found success- 

 ful in another section, without first determining whether the 

 conditions are the same. On the Pacific coast, particularly in 

 the Puget Sound country where they have a very temperate 

 climate and trees make an extreme vegetative growth, summer 

 pruning is necessary and desirable. They have to check growth 

 in order to get fruit. Summer pruning in Virginia in the same 

 measure would seriously hurt the trees. We use summer 

 pruning chiefly on young trees, six or seven years old, which 

 ought to be coming into bearing, but which have not done so 

 because they are making too much wood. A light pruning 

 in July usually brings these trees into bearing. It is a special 

 practice for certain trees, not a general practice for all trees. 

 Most of our pruning is best done in the spring and during the 

 winter. I start pruning in the fall as soon as the leaves are off 

 and keep at it during the winter, whenever the weather is 

 mild. We have few days when the wood is frozen, so that we 

 can prune all winter without danger of winter injury, which is 

 an advantage in a large orchard. 



Fertilising. There are the two opposing camps on the sub- 

 ject of apple fertilizing. There is the report of the New York 

 Experiment Station, showing that in western New York there 

 is no profit in fertilizing apples at all ; and there is a report from 

 the Pennsylvania Experiment Station showing marked profit 

 from fertilizing apples. I have found it distinctly profitable 

 to use fertilizers. I do this, however, with the tree as a unit, 

 not the orchard. In other words, instead of applying a thousand 



