46 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Graham — I agree with you. 



A Member — Can someone tell us about cutting out 35-foot tops, will 

 it not do more harm than good? 



Mr. Friday — I have had some experience along this line. You can 

 cut it down as soon as you have growth inside to shade the limbs, 

 especially on the north side of the tree. I have had some trees where 

 <|iiite large limbs were laid bare to the sun by cutting and I had sun- 

 scald. 



Mr. Whiter — If the top limbs are cut off, they should be cut off above 

 lateral branches growing toward the outside of the trees then put a 

 lit lie white lead on the wound. 



Question — Would you plant all trees in the fall? 



Answer — No, I would not. 



Apples and pears and sour cherries may be under favorable condi- 

 tions but sweet cherries and peaches never. 



Question — When is the best time to prune the apple and peach? 



Mr. White — I suppose this refers to an old orchard. I think it is 

 generally considered that the spring time is the best time to prune either 

 apples or peaches. I have seen people prune peach trees in October 

 and in every case that I know of it has resulted disastrously. Any 

 wound that is made late in the fall has no chance to heal until the 

 next spring. That exposed growing tissue, exposed to the dry winds 

 and the cold is liable to die back quite a little, and the healing over 

 of the wound can not progress, even when springtime comes. Spring 

 pruning will stimulate more growth than summer pruning. If the trees 

 are making a normal growth of say eight or ten or twelve inches, or 

 not making that much growth, spring pruning would be preferable. 



Question — How early in the spring would you begin pruning; or how 

 late in the winter? 



Mr. White — I always answer this question this .way: If I had a 

 mixed orchard of apples, pears, plums, cherries and peaches, I would 

 begin on the apples first, then take the pears and plums, then the 

 cherries and then the peaches — begin with the hardiest fruit first and 

 leave the tenderest — the peaches — until all danger of winter injur}' is 

 over. 



Question— When would you begin to prune an apple tree? 



Mr. White — I would not begin to prune an apple tree, until about the 

 first of February. Every wound that you make before this has no 

 chance to heal over and dries out and freezes back, and there is danger 

 that it can not readily begin to heal over when springtime comes. 



A Member — Mr. Graham's suggestion or I might say his philosophy, 

 as to his method of treating a young orchard, is this, as I understood it: 

 He would plant his young orchard, growing corn one year, then grow- 

 ing another crop of corn on that same ground, and then following this 

 with another crop. Now we would not expect the ground the second 

 year to be just as good as the year before. We would not pursue any 

 such method as that; for we are convinced that some system of rota- 

 tion is necessary in keeping the soil up. But somehow it seems that, 

 when we come to grow an orchard, we pursue methods that we would 

 not think of using on any other crop. We get our ground reduced down 

 to where it would not grow any profitable farm crop and then practice 



