BETTER FRUIT 



STATE ASSOCIATE EDITORS 



OBEGOX— C. 1. Lewis. Horticulturist. ConaUis. 



WASHINGTON — Dr. A. L. Melander. Entomologist; 

 O. M. Morris, Horticulturist ; W. S. Tliornber, Horticul- 

 turist, Piillnian. , . ^ 



COLORADO — C. P. Gillette, Director and Entomologist: 

 E. B. House. Chief of Department of Civil and Irrigation 

 Engineering. State Agricultural College. Fort Collins. 



ARIZONA— E. P. Tavlor. Horiienlturist. Tucson. 



WISCONSIN— Dr. E. D. Ball, Director and Entomologist. 

 Madison. _ . ^ 



JIONTANA— O. B. Whipple. Horticulturist. Bozeman. 



CALIFORNIA — C. W. Woodworth, Entomologist, Berke- 

 ley; W. H. Volck. Entomologist. Watsonville; Leon D. 

 Btit'chelor, Horticulturist. Riverside. 



INT^IANA- H. S. Jackson. Pathologist, Lafayette. 



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Entered as second-class matter April 22, 1918, 



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Volume XIII 



Portland, Oregon, November 1, 1918 



Number 5 



Pruning the Bearing Tree 



By C. L Lewis, Chief Division of Horticulture Oregon Agricultural College, Corvallis 



IN treating the question of pruning 

 it is wiser to deal largely with 

 principles and allow each grower to 

 work out his own special application. 

 However, the field of pruning is so large 

 and the time is so short before the 

 pruning season begins that I am going 

 to deal very largely this time with some 

 applications of the general principles 

 of pruning, choosing such applications 

 as I feel would perhaps reach the larger 

 number of our Western growers, and 

 giving as little attention as possible to 

 the question of principles. 



During these war times the problem 

 of cost of labor is uppermost in the 

 minds of most fruit growers. Labor is 

 so high and so scarce that it must be 

 utilized to the best advantage. We 

 must not, however, carry the question 

 of economy to such extremes that it will 

 prevent our producing high-quality 

 fruits, as there seems to be a good mar- 

 ket at profitable prices for such fruits. 

 One of the questions which is very 

 important at this time is, how early can 

 I safely begin my pruning? If the 

 pruning period can be spread over a 

 long time it will mean hiring less labor, 

 because the grower can do more of his 

 own work. Under normal conditions 

 the best practice seems to be to wait 

 until the danger of severe freezing is 

 over, which is most apt to occur during 

 December and January. One probably 

 runs a less chance of injury by pruning 

 after that period in those sections sub- 

 ject to freezing winters; however, in 

 most districts of the Pacific Northwest 

 there has been only one winter in the 

 last twelve years, namely that of 1908, 

 when much damage occurred from early 

 pruning. During that winter consider- 

 able die back and heart rot was started, 

 due to the fact that the early-cut sur- 

 faces were easily damaged by the 

 severe winter, and rots got a foothold 

 in the trees. With the present great 

 scarcity of labor one would probably 

 be justified in beginning as soon as 

 most of the leaves are off the trees. It 

 would be better, however, to confine 

 such pruning to the older, more mature 

 trees and the portions having the better 

 air drainage. We should also remem- 

 ber that it is unwise to prune trees 

 when they are frozen. By beginning 

 early the grower would have late fall. 



all winter and a portion of the spring 

 up to the time the leaves are breaking 

 in which to do the pruning. 



In pruning our bearing fruit trees, 

 the bud and the fruit spurs are two 

 parts which we should give special 

 study. Some investigations that we 

 have made at this experiment station 

 would indicate that the percentage of 

 spurs that bloom from year to year 

 decreases as such spurs get older, and 

 that the percentage of spurs which 

 bears fruit decreases at an even faster 

 rate as they get older. In other words, 

 some spurs may have the vitality to 

 produce a bloom but have not reserve 

 energy enough to set or, after setting, 

 to mature a fruit. Our investigations 

 have shown that the amount of growth 

 that a spur makes for a given season 

 has a close relation to its bearing the 

 following season. There is also a cor- 

 relation between bearing and length 

 and diameter of spur. Branches that 

 have a large diameter have stronger 

 spurs and bear more fruit. From these 

 results it would seem that the spur to 

 a large extent acts as a barometer, and 

 that a study of their vitality and the 

 nature of the wood on which they are 

 borne will determine to a certain de- 

 gree what pruning should be given 

 such trees. One should attempt to de- 

 velop a fair amount of new wood annu- 

 ally in order to provide for the neces- 

 sary increase of new buds and spurs 

 essential to the best tree development 

 and should constantly keep in mind the 

 revitalizing of some of the older spurs 

 on the trees. 



General pruning practices will mean 

 either a heading back, a thinning out, 

 or a combination of these two. If one 

 simply desires strong sprouts and a 

 new top, so to speak, then heavy head- 

 ing back will produce that result, but 

 if one really desires more development 

 of spur and bud in the immediate 

 future, then a moderate heading back 

 would be more desirable, since one 

 would be removing a much smaller 

 number of buds and spurs and would 

 discourage the formation of a large 

 number of sprouts, which in turn 

 would require heavy heading back. 

 Likewise heavy thinning out would 

 naturally remove more buds than a 

 moderate or light thinning out. Let us 



apply this idea of heading and thinning 

 to some of our standard varieties. Take 

 the .lonathan and Wagcner as typical 

 of varieties which often bear large 

 quantities of fruit from axillary buds, 

 w^hich would be found on the one-year- 

 old wood. It is evident that a heavy 

 heading back of such varieties would 

 remove a large percentage of the crop, 

 and this is just what is happening in 

 many an orchard in the Pacific North- 

 west. The tonnage is being greatly re- 

 duced by such pruning. Take these 

 varieties from six to ten years of age 

 for example, and they could go without 

 heading for several years to good ad- 

 vantage, and would bear bushels of 

 fruit to the tree which otherwise would 

 be sacrificed. Of course one can carry 

 the non-heading to the extreme. When 

 heading is done with such varieties, it 

 is often wise to do it soon after the 

 apples have formed, we would say in 

 early June. In this way a good crop 

 of apples can still be saved and new 

 wood developed for the next year's 

 crop. The Newtown, however, offers 

 an entirely different problem; severe 

 heading in of this variety does not so 

 much remove fruit buds which are al- 

 ready on the tree, but it has a tendency 

 to force out an excessive number of 

 laterals. As a result many of our New- 

 towns are nothing but brush-heaps, and 

 while they continue in this condition 

 will produce little or no fruit often 

 until they are twelve or fifteen years of 

 age. Reduce the heading to little or 

 nothing for a few years and have the 

 pruning consist more of thinning out, 

 and the trees will begin to bear. In 

 thinning out some of these thick New- 

 towns, however, two plans can be fol- 

 lowed. One is to thin out much of the 

 lighter brushy wood, and the second is 

 to take out bodily a few of the large 

 branches which sooner or later should 

 be sacrificed. Generally speaking, I 

 believe the latter practice would be the 

 more practical, as it still opens up the 

 tree and does not remove as many fruit 

 buds. Some of these smaller branches 

 of Yellow Newtowns are the first 

 branches to bear and the constant thin- 

 ning out of such wood deprives the 

 trees of a large percentage of their buds 

 and spurs and keeps them constantly 

 producing vegetative growth instead of 



