PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 331 



pruning. We do not find it practicable to thin plums, it is too much 

 work; it will not pay. 



Tlie President: Are j^ou really sure of that statement? 



Mr. Stearns: I am, so far as Lombard is concerned. I have tried it. 

 If you have your own help, so that it does not cost you anything, it 

 will pay to thin; but if you have to hire it done, at the present prices of 

 fruit it will not pay. Two years, especially, my j)lums were affected 

 quite badly on the northwest side of the trees, by a storm, and I was 

 afraid the pickers would not discriminate in picking, but would put 

 those in with the perfect fruit, and so I hired pickers to take those oif; 

 and the trees that I thinned cost me more for help than the value of 

 the balance of the fruit that was not affected. But you can do it by this 

 process of pruning. 



Mr. Post: Now, I have had a full crop of plums for four years in suc- 

 cession, which is rarely the case; if you do not do something, either thin 

 by picking off or by pruning, you will not get a crop of plums ofteuer 

 than every other year, because the plum is a fruit that bears heavily when 

 it does bear, especially the Lombard; and by the system of pruning that 

 has been illustrated here you can get a good crop of plums every year. 

 I have found it to as great advantage to the pear as to the peach. I 

 practice on all fruits, for that matter, this system of heading in or con- 

 centrating the vitality of the tree, and it must be done if you expect to get 

 good fruit, unless you fertilize very heavily and give plenty of irriga- 

 tion in dry seasons. 



The President: What do you say about Judge RamsdelTs question as 

 to winter pruning of different fruits? 



Mr. Stearns : I w^ould not do pruning of anything until March. 



The President: What do you base that on, experience or information? 



Mr. Stearns: On exi)erience, and the way 1 got the idea w^as in doing 

 grafting in winter in apples and in pears. If you get anything like a 

 severe winter you will find that the branch from which you cut scions 

 will be killed back from an inch to six inches, where you took the scion 

 oft", and of course there would be the same result in pruning the trees. 



The President: That was on what? 



Mr. Stearns:- Pears and apples, and on peaches and plums it would 

 be still worse. 



Mr. Ramsdell : I asked the question particularly in regard to peaches, 

 because the discussion had taken a range without excepting peaches as 

 to winter pruning. Some years ago, when I first went to planting 

 peaches, I planted an orchard of about 500 trees, and in our country, in 

 those years particularly, we had deep snow — snow three or four feet 

 deep. The trees had a fine growth, about the middle of November, and 

 I went out and pruned the limbs nicely so that they would not break 

 down in the snow. The next spring (although those trees were covered 

 with snow, so that it could not have been the severity of the winter) 

 every one of them was dead, and I laid it to pruning in the wrong 

 season of the year. 



Mr. Cook: I would like to ask if this system of pruning has any effect 

 as a preventive of the decay of plums on the tree? 



Mr. Stearns: I have very little trouble with plum rot. I attribute 

 what I have pretty largely to poor spraying. I used to have a great 



