PRUNING PLUM TREES 



TAKING for granted that your trees 

 are bought from the nursery, prun- 

 ing should be commenced at the 

 time of planting in the orchard, carefully 

 trimming the bruised or broken ends of 

 roots with a sharp knife. Carry out with 

 the top the same idea you would when plant- 

 ing shade trees — cut back somewhere near 

 in proportion to the loss of roots, and you 

 will have a much stronger immediate 

 growth than you will if no pruning is done. 



If your young tree is a long switch, it is 

 easy to plan for the future form of the tree. 

 Cut back as low as you dare have the 

 branches spread from the trunk. It is not 

 desirable to have the branches up so high 

 that a horse may pass under. Better if the 

 branches keep the horse so far away that 

 the whiffletrees cannot touch the body, but 

 you will want to get under the tree yourself 

 to pick up fruit. Some varieties will scarce- 

 ly permit this if allowed to grow their own 

 way when young. 



You may sometimes buy young trees 

 which have not been properly trained in the 

 nursery, thus making it necessary to cut 

 well back to force the growth of a new body 

 rather than to have a sprawling thing which 

 will compel the removal of large branches 

 at some future time. If your trees thrive 

 well, the branches will be long switches, 

 which should be cut back to one-third of 

 their length, otherwise some will throw out 

 branches near the ends, and the most thrifty 

 ones will incline to take on the form of trees 

 themselves. The more luxuriant the 

 growth of the switch the more positive 

 should be the pruning. This cutting back 

 should be repeated so long as the tendency 

 to make long extensions of growth is con- 

 tinued, but after fruiting commences, atten- 

 tion will have to be given mostly to keeping 

 the inside sufficiently open and preventing 



interlocking or crossing of small branches. 



Forethought in pruning will make the 

 trees more compact and strong, thus lessen- 

 ing the tendency to break down when load- 

 ed with fruit. A good time to prune is late 

 in winter during the pleasant days when you 

 f:cl as if you just wanted to do some horti- 

 cultural work that makes it seem as if 

 spring is coming. Other good times to 

 prune are when the weather is not too hot 

 nor too cold. It would be well to keep 

 your knife in your pocket when the wood is 

 frozen, and not plan for any pruning dur- 

 ing the dog days, but even then you may 

 help nature along if you have overlooked 

 here or there a small branch which shows 

 that the tree will soon have no use for *t. 

 A knife blade with a straight edge is better 

 for pruning than the orthodox form of a 

 hooked blade. With a slight pressure with 

 the left hand on the branch to be removed 

 and a drawing cut with the right hand, you 

 can with a straight sharp edge remove a 

 much larger branch than should be found 

 necessary to take off. 



Pruning for stubs to strike on when jar- 

 ring off the curculios and gouger seems to 

 be of double necessity. When cutting for 

 scions, judgment should be used in regard 

 to the future shaping of the young tree, and 

 it would be well to do it yourself rather than 

 to defer to the opinion of the man who 

 wants the scions. After the trees have 

 commenced to bear you may have difficulty 

 in getting scions from such free fruiting 

 varieties as the Arctic, Townsend, DeSoto, 

 Rollingstone, etc. 



Experiments in cutting back parts of 

 trees this year on the Arctic and Baraboo, 

 prove that we can in this way promote 

 young growth. Reasoning from this, I 

 think we can to some extent thus rejuvenate 

 our old trees of such overbearing varieties 



