Annual Meeting at St. Joseph. 195 



by a careful study of the structure of trees, because the pruuiug 

 applied to trees must (aside from the geueral princij^les., ou which 

 all pruning depends) be adapted to its particular habits of growth 

 and mode of bearing its fruit. * * * The idea that our bright 

 American sun and clear atmosphere render pruning an almost un- 

 necessary operation, has not only been inculcated by horticultural 

 writers, but has been acted upon in practice to such an extent that 

 more than three-fourths of all the bearing fruit trees in the country 

 are at this moment either lean, misshaped skeletons, or the heads 

 are perfect masses of wood unable to yield more than one bushel in 

 ten of fruit well matured, colored and ripened/^ 



I prefer to train standard trees in the shape of a pyramid with 

 a central stem. I generally select yearling trees to plant without 

 branches. These I cut back a little to a good sound bud. During 

 the summer I see that the shoots from the bud cut to, takes the 

 lead, by pinching the others, if they seem to outgrow their leader. 

 I go over my orchard a few times during the summer for that pur- 

 pose. The next season I cut the leader back far enough to insure 

 the growth of every bud, as near as possible. 



Some say not to shorten the leader, but / sai/ do. If your leader 

 has made a fine growth and is not cut back the next season, the 

 consequence is that only a few buds next to the terminal bud will 

 push, while the rest will only produce rosettes of leaves ; you will 

 get blanks that can never be filled up again. The sap always acts 

 with greater force at the extremities of the shoots, which is as 

 true as preaching. As I said before, I always cut back the leader 

 and that to a good, sound bud opposite the bud pruned to tlie j^re- 

 vious season. 



If the branches had been pinched enough they soldom need 

 pruning, except to remove all that are badly situated, for they 

 should not be nearer than eight or ten inches to each other, but 

 this I attend to during the summer by rubbing off the buds that 

 are likely to produce such branches. The summer following I do 

 as before, see that the bud pruned to, produces a new leader, by 

 pinching back other branches that would be likely to outgrow it. 

 If this is kept up a few years you can have nice trees, without 

 using the knife but very little. I know some will say that that is 

 too much trouble. But of such I would ask, what they could 

 accomplish without trouble. If a man goes to work in the morning 

 with the calculation to do a day's work, he can attend to a large 

 orchard in a very short time. To be sure you cannot always get 

 yearling trees to commence with. But every tree can be managed 



