Winter Meeting. 291 



boy*s hair to look neat, your trees also. Labor so that you may expect 

 good fruits and good fruits will crown your labors abundantly with 

 unexpected measure. 



DISCUSSION ON PRUNING. 



Mr. Smelzer — In our part of the country it is detrimental to the 

 peach trees to prune just before they bloom, any other time is better, 

 even after the fruit is as large as a hickory nut. 



Mr. Steiman — I said before the trees bloom and not just before 

 blooming. 



N. F. Murray — I had two hundred peach trees not cut back and 

 got a half bushel of peaches off of them the next season, but the trees 

 made no growth. Those cut back made six feet of growth. Those cut 

 back are hardier and not killed so easily by five degrees. The new 

 growth may come from the cut limbs, but this does not account for 

 those not cut which still stand. Cut back the weakened trees and they 

 will be better than when not cut. You will have more fruit and better 

 and easier picked when the peach trees are pruned. 



W. G. Gano — Would like to ask Mr. Smelzer if he cuts the peach 

 back before the fruit sets or after? 



Mr. Smelzer — We cut back in the winter if we want more wood 

 growth, and prune while the trees are dormant if they are weak. We 

 prune also when we thin the fruit. But I don't do as much of it as I 

 used to, because I don't think it is necessary. 



Mr. Erb — At Van Buren, Ark., I saw a crop of ten bushels on three- 

 year-old trees. These trees bear more peaches if not pruned. They are 

 left to grow twenty feet high and are loaded so that the branches were 

 bent. The trees were twenty feet apart and overlapped. They had to 

 haul the fruit out on sleds, as the wagons cannot get through. Maybe 

 this will prove too much for the tree. Mr, Culver of Koshkonong said 

 he was not going to prune, but w^ould let his peach trees grow. . 



G. T. Tippin — These trees were not cut back after the second year. 

 The theory of cutting back was based on the idea of getting fruit on the 

 lov/ limbs. Mr. Stewart has done differently ; he cuts fifteen to eighteen 

 inches high and leaves three or four buds to grow, and this forms a sad- 

 dle instead of the ordinary crotch. So, instead of splitting, the limbs 

 bend down and go back when the fruit is removed. In thia way no bad 

 forks are formed. We get too much branching and top by cutting so 

 often. 



G. A. Atwood — I know of one orchard of one hundred and ten 

 acres from which we had six car loads of peaches. 



