42 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MY METHOD OF PRUNING. 



PAUL ROSE, SOUTH FRANKFORT. 



It seems to me that for me to stand up here and give you an address 

 on pruning or tell you hoAV I prune in my orchards is a little out of 

 place, for you are all fruit growers here and you understand the method 

 of pruning as well as I do, but I will do the best I can and perhaps some 

 suggestions or thoughts may be brought out that will help some one. 



Possibly I better say the way I pmne is to trust the hired man to do 

 it. But this is not always very satisfactory. I had thirty men working 

 in an orchard. Tliey were all over it, one day I went into the orchard, 

 and looking at a piece of work one of them had done, I said, "This is 

 not the way to prune — why did you leave that great knob on that cherry 

 tree like that?" His reply was, "I wanted to have a place to hang 

 baskets for cherries." Well, I just started those men out to do their 

 work all over again and do it right. 



Now. in something like Bible phraseology, there is a place to prune 

 and there is a place not to prune. Now, starting with a little tree, which 

 you cret from the nursery. I believe in heeling in every tree, just as Mr. 

 Morrell has described. Take no chances. But before I do this, I begin 

 to prune that tree. I do not always do this but I do whenever I have 

 the time. The better Avay is to take that tree and trim it just as you 

 Avant it when you plant it, both the roots and the top. You want this 

 done right where the sap circulates between the wood and the bark, 

 there is where the rootlets are formed. If you do that in the fall, just 

 as soon as you set it out in the spring, then the work begins, but if 

 you wait until spring before doing this, there is more or less delay in 

 this resj)ect. 



If the tree is a peach you trim to a whip or leave very few limbs. In 

 this cutworm country we want to leave a surface for buds — band the 

 trees and nut tnnglefoot on. I generally, however, have my soil so 

 prepared that there are no cut worms, but many of my neighbors have 

 h)st trees by this way. 



What will we do next with that little tree? If you have the time 

 then go through and cultivate, and you can in a manner, form the top 

 of ih'^i tree the first season. You can break off these little limbs grow- 

 ing where they should not grow and throw the growth where it should 

 be. Sometimes that tree will grow two or three limbs on the northwest 

 or northeast side, while the opposite side there are no limbs — cut these 

 off. at least the larger ones. Then the second year, these trees can be 

 shaped up, cutting out everything except about three branches. They 

 form the limbs and head that must carry the load in after years. In 

 windy sections it is very hard to grow a tree of uniform size. 



In the cherries I prefer to set out a tree two years old — I have tried 

 one-year-old trees but they did not do so well, either the sweet or the 

 sour cherry. 



There is one variety of cherry, the Lambert, the best late black sweet 

 cherry that I have raised — that tree is inclined to grow forky — ^you must 



