370 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the head — never leave more than five with the center; balance them 

 on one stem ; keep the buds rubbed off eighteen inches or two feet 

 from main stem. Let these head limbs grow up high enough to be out 

 of your way, and if they incline to come down too low, clip them at a 

 bud that turns up, if they run too straight up cut at a bud that turns 

 out. You can by so doing regulate the top of the tree in pruning. 

 Keep all unnecessary limbs off by rubing off" the buds or cut when very 

 small. By so doing we avoid cutting large limbs from the trunk or 

 main branches, which has been the cause of the death of a great many 

 good trees in our old orchards. Let enough limbs remain on the inside 

 of your trees so you can step from one limb to the other in old trees — 

 this makes a ladder to get to the top of the tree. Where there is an 

 opening let a watersprout grow, thereby making a young top on an old 

 body, I believe the watersprouts should not always all be cut off. We 

 go to work in a great hurry in pruning our orchards. Many of us com- 

 mence cutting and cut all the limbs, even every twig, from four to six 

 feet from main trunk, which makes it very difficult to get to our fruit. 

 If you will notice you can see most of our low-headed trees eight to 

 ten feet (often even more than that) to the first fruit limb from the root 

 of the tree. A great many from five to eight of these branches, or 

 trunks, as I call them, all eight to twelve feet to the first twig that can 

 have any fruit. The center branches will have to be cut off or the top 

 will be too thick. Now we have a little brush of fruit limbs high up 

 and almost impossible to get at for the want of limbs to stand upon. 

 This leaves nearly all the fruit ten to twenty-five feet from the main 

 trunk of our trees. We have too much wood — entirely too much top 

 to bur trees. When they are full of friiit the ground we give them (16 

 to 25 feet) is not enough to suppoi't all this wood and also keep the 

 fruit in a healthy condition. The fruit will become diseased for the 

 want of nutriment or proper food. 



And now the thinning begins. Nature won't trim our trees, but it 

 will thin our fruit. If we don't do our part and keep our trees in 

 proper shape the apple becomes diseased from starvation because we 

 have too much top or tree — because we head too low. Head high and 

 your trees won't have so much top and you can easy keep them in 

 proper bounds. The codling moth and other insects soon know when 

 an apple is not healthy^ — they go for it^ — they were created for that pur- 

 pose. Why, let the sturdy oak of the forest become diseased, and it 

 will become filled with these pests before we would know there was 

 anything the matter with the tree. We don't find any of these insects 

 in vigorous, healthy trees, and we don't find many in vigorous, healthy 



